Welcome to our February 2014 newsletter for the Make Arma Not War contest. We'd like to use this opportunity to give you an update of what's happening behind-the-scenes.

Contest Rules Update

Based on your feedback, we decided to make two small, but important changes to the contest rules (more info). We rephrased the "Registration" section to make it clear that BI does not intend to publish or adapt the contest entries (it will always remain the IP of their respective author). On top of that, we're now also allowing contestants to benefit from the unique functionalities of the Community Based Addons (CBA). However, note that CBA is still the only third-party addon which is allowed. Overall, we advise people to be careful with any kind of third party content and respect each other's work.

Participants FAQ

In light of the above, we've also collected the questions we received after our initial announcement. The result is a dedicated 'Participants FAQ' (available at makearma.com/faq). Unlike the regular FAQ, this Participants FAQ is primarily intended for those who are participating in the contest. The questions are divided into the following categories: Contest, Third Party Content, and Licenses. If you can't find the answer to your question, feel free to post it to the Make Arma Not War forums, or e-mail us directly at support@makearmanotwar.com. We'll be updating the FAQ as we move along.

Steam Workshop

As you probably know, Arma 3 has integrated the Steam Workshop to enable you to share custom-created scenarios. Our current goal is to make this work for addons as well. This, for one, would enable us to use the Steam Workshop for the handling of submissions (for each contest category except Total Modification - will be explained in more detail later). From a technical perspective, however, this is not an easy task - but the Arma 3 development team is hard at work to have this ready as soon as possible. On top of the Steam Workshop integration, we're looking into the infrastructure of our makearma.com participant database, exploring features which would enable everyone to track, promote and endorse the contest entries.

Health Care in Danger

We were very excited to see the massive interest for the ICRC's Health Care in Danger Special Award. To further explain the topic of 'Health Care in Danger', and what sort of content we're searching for, we're working with the ICRC to prepare a dedicated interview. Hopefully this will make things more clear. This 'special feature' will probably also go hand in hand with the first reveal of a Make Arma Not War jury member!

What else?

Speaking of jury members, we're currently filling up the remaining seats on our Make Arma Not War committee. We're already proud to have a great selection of experts on board - and we can't wait to reveal the complete list!

Of course these past two months have also been a moment of reflection and preparation of our plans for Arma 3 this year. Creative Director Jay Crowe already outlined the basic direction in his recent blog, but in short - with a wealth of new official and unofficial content to be expected - Arma 3 will be a game you'll want to keep playing - or at least revisit every once in a while.

All in all, both we as developer and you as players and creators have an exciting year in front of us. We wish everyone good luck - and remember to keep an eye out for future contest announcements!

Korneel van ’t Land & Ivan Buchta

Bohemia Interactive