Arma is one of the most popular military simulation franchises today, consistently drawing positive reviews for its realistic portrayal on modern combat.

It’s so realistic, in fact, that gameplay is often mistaken for genuine combat footage or peddled as part of disinformation and propaganda. More often than not, you’ll see videos on social media claiming to show air or ground warfare from Ukraine or the Middle East which are actually just clips from Arma (the third mainline entry is an especially common source). Even with the advent of community notes on Twitter and Meta platforms like Facebook, these videos tend to garner thousands to millions of interactions and more than a handful of people who think they’re real. It’s gotten so bad that the developers released a statement in 2023, expressing pride that their work is so realistic but also annoyance about it being used for such deception.

As bad as things can get on the war side, surely your grandparents on Facebook won’t be fooled by the clip of you wrapping your rally car around a tree, right?

On Friday, Bohemia Interactive announced a rally DLC for Arma Reforger with a launch date to be revealed later. It is the first official DLC for Reforger since the game’s full release in 2023. No, this isn’t an out-of-season April Fool’s joke.

“Rally brings racing to Arma Reforger: three purpose-built rally variants of the civilian cars you already know, six stages across all three islands, and nothing at all to shoot at. Just a stopwatch, a gearbox, and the tree you are about to find,” reads the DLC’s Steam page.

The expansion consists of six tracks on the islands of Arland, Everon, and Kolguyev, all three of which are playable maps in the base game. Players race rally versions of the fictional civilian cars Dana 2001 RS, Šárka 105 RS, and Sputnik 600 RS, which Bohemia notes are “considerably faster and less sensible” than their standard counterparts. If the car brand parodies didn’t make it obvious, the DLC is like a tribute to Soviet rallying in the later years of the Cold War as Reforger is set in 1989; the game’s name is also a reference to NATO’s Exercise Reforger in Germany during this time period.

“Race across Arland’s airfield in the rain, descend Kolguyev’s volcanic slopes at dawn, or brave Everon’s forest switchbacks at night,” the Steam page continues. “The same ground you have been fighting over for years, now taken at frightening speed.

“Every stage keeps its times. Chase the ghost of the best run on record and watch it take the line you should have taken. Beat it and it becomes you. Lose to it and it is still you. This is Rally.”

While absurd to think that a game like Arma would have racing in it, Bohemia is no stranger to antics like this. Arma 3 had a karting minigame added as an April Fool’s joke in 2014 before fan demand led to it becoming a permanent feature. Rally fan mods also exist for several Arma titles.

Incidentally, Bohemia’s Operation Flashpoint series was published by racing game-savvy Codemasters until the latter shifted away to focus on F1 and DiRT while taking the Flashpoint name with it. Bohemia created Arma as a spiritual successor of sort.

This is also fairly reminiscent of how the 2002 DICE title RalliSport Challenge was made on the Refractor 2 engine, which is best known for powering Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam.

Being downloadable content means the base Arma Reforger is required to play it.

Featured image credit: Bohemia Interactive