The online game, America's Army, was first developed as a recruiting tool. Costing over eight million dollars to develop, and $2.5 million a year to maintain, some five million people have downloaded the front end (player) software in the last three years. At peak times, over 5,000 players are online with the game simultaneously. Recruiters are satisfied with the number of prospects coming in because of the game. But others in the military, and the government, have also been attracted to the game. Units headed for Iraq have found the game useful for training. The Secret Service has found the game useful for planning and practice. Many other requests followed, to the point that a separate America's Army game had to be set up for the government users (who cannot, for various reasons, do their thing with civilian users hanging about.) Additional software has been added, in some cases, to support the special needs of government users. Thus the large investment in creating America's Army has made it possible for many other parts of the armed forces and government to create realistic online training systems.