A few weeks before the release of Portal 2, the game's developer Valve teamed up with a variety of indie game developers to present a massive alternate reality game. Now another developer seems to be presenting its own promotional ARG that could lead to some sort of game announcement. PC Gamer reports that the official web site for the ArmA 2 military shooter franchise was "hacked" earlier today. Its web page was briefly replaced with the image you can see above by the hacker group "p3R51An 8lacK Hat5 8oy5." The page says that the hacker group will present new info every 42 hours.
While the ArmA 2 page is back to normal, at least for now, what's interesting is that the hacked page has been placed on the AAN World News site. Why is that interesting? It's a fake news site that's been used by ArmA II developers Bohemia Interactive to promote the fictional back story for the ArmA game franchise. That would seem to single that the team is using the site and the "hacker group" as a way to promote ... something. ArmA fans are already posting on the game's official message boards in an attempt to decipher the ARG's clues to get some hints as to what Bohemia Interactive has in store for its fans.
Having an ARG promotion to help launch a game franchise is nothing new of course. The release of Microsofts Halo 2 Xbox first person shooter was promoted by the now classic "I Love Bees" ARG campaign.
