Ok, so last night I flipped my shit… In late March and early April, I was playing Arma 1, specifically Arma: Gold Edition (the complete, final release). After playing through the main campaign, I realised that there was info/cutscenes missing that I was expecting to be there, based on the game’s Wiki. After a bit of digging, I found out that this version of the game (and generally the international one) and the North American version (at least the base game without expansion) have completely different cutscenes (not sure if other differences as well), which give the events in the game a slightly different meaning. And then I found out that said base-game NA version - titled Arma: Combat Operations - is actually still available on Steam and not region-locked. I hadn’t noticed its existence before that, since it wasn’t listed on the series’ product list or included in any of the bundles (unlike the Gold Edition).
Now, I was pretty ecstatic about it, looking forward to actually being able to buy and experience the different version. My instincts were telling me “You’re lucky it’s here, so don’t wait and buy it now, just in case they decide to delist it anytime soon” (since it is basically redundant with the Gold Edition existing). But it was just a few days after the Spring Sale in which I bought some games had ended, so I didn’t want to immediately buy more again. Turned out A:CO had also been on discount, so I just missed it, but since the Arma games go on sale pretty often, I decided to wait until my paycheck later this month and either buy the game full price (slightly over 7 EUR) or - if it goes on discount again - buy it cheap (slightly under 2 EUR), possibly with something else. I figured “If they haven’t delisted it up until now, surely they won’t do it in the next 2-3 weeks, right??” Well, I think you can already tell where this is going…
Fast forward to yesterday, the Arma games have been on sale these past few days, so I wanted to buy A:CO, only to find out… that they fucking delisted it!!! Or rather disabled purchase, since the app site can still be accessed, but to me it’s the same (based on SteamDB probably a week or so ago) Murphy’s fucking law at it’s finest… Had I listened to my instinct and bought the damn thing right when I found out about it, I would’ve been golden and singing kumbaya today. Instead, I went to bed last night utterly pissed off and (being unable to get any decent sleep in my mood and thanks to my gf’s Earth-shattering snoring) woke up in the shittiest mood in forever, my Saturday/weekend completely ruined, just because of a dumb decision to potentially save 5 bucks…
Anyways, sorry for the rant on what is essentially a stupid and irrelevant issue, but I desperately needed to vent my frustration over this somewhere, and this is pretty much the only (suitable) place…
(PS: In case anyone who went through the trouble of reading the above is wondering - Yes, I checked key-selling stores right away. Only the shady/disputable ones have it and for an absolutely ridiculous price, so I’m not even thinking about those. And while there are retail versions available for a good price, the game’s PCGW entry indicates they might come with potentially problematic DRM, so I’m not sure it’s worth a shot).
