A gun locked on a enemy. Boom! A cheer goes up for the winning team. But this game, War Thunder, a free-to-play combat video game, has players that leak classified documents on the internet. Fans posted documents related to China, British, and French war tanks to get the tanks in the game to be “more realistic”. Even though they know that if one has classified information and leak it online, it violates the law, the players still do it to “win arguments”.
Founder of the Gaijin Entertainment (War Thunder’s publisher), Anton Yudintsev, says neither he nor his team anticipated this exposing situation. He continues to be surprised by the number of people who post these foreign government classified documents on their forums, a user’s manual. Despite knowing that the documents are so-called “useless” to the public and “pointless” to developers, the users post the classified records, no matter how many times Gaijin Entertainment specifies not to.
“We explain to the users again and again that it’s pointless to give us any documents that we cannot and won’t use, but we probably can do more to explain this,” Yudintsev said. “Unfortunately, there is no way to completely prevent people from publishing something on the internet. We delete the posts and permanently ban those who break the rules, so our users know that they risk everything essentially for nothing.”
In early 2021, three documents were leaked on the game’s website. One poster uploaded a manual to a British Challenger 2 tank and said that he just wanted to get a developer to make the tank more accurate in the game. Another War Thunder player posted a Leclerc S2 (French tank unit) to prove someone wrong in a online debate about its rotation speed. The last person who uploaded classified information on China’s DTC10-125 tank had his or her intentions unknown to the public. All three posts were taken down within a few hours of being on the internet.
“We’re happy that even military professionals like what we do,” Sonny Butterworth, a senior analyst for a defense intelligence company said. “But breaking the law in order to win an argument online is too much. I’d like to ask all of them: please, never do that!”
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/05/tank-plan-leaks-war-thunder/
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/classified-challenger-tank-specs-leaked-online-for-videogame/
Founder of the Gaijin Entertainment (War Thunder’s publisher), Anton Yudintsev, says neither he nor his team anticipated this exposing situation. He continues to be surprised by the number of people who post these foreign government classified documents on their forums, a user’s manual. Despite knowing that the documents are so-called “useless” to the public and “pointless” to developers, the users post the classified records, no matter how many times Gaijin Entertainment specifies not to.
“We explain to the users again and again that it’s pointless to give us any documents that we cannot and won’t use, but we probably can do more to explain this,” Yudintsev said. “Unfortunately, there is no way to completely prevent people from publishing something on the internet. We delete the posts and permanently ban those who break the rules, so our users know that they risk everything essentially for nothing.”
In early 2021, three documents were leaked on the game’s website. One poster uploaded a manual to a British Challenger 2 tank and said that he just wanted to get a developer to make the tank more accurate in the game. Another War Thunder player posted a Leclerc S2 (French tank unit) to prove someone wrong in a online debate about its rotation speed. The last person who uploaded classified information on China’s DTC10-125 tank had his or her intentions unknown to the public. All three posts were taken down within a few hours of being on the internet.
“We’re happy that even military professionals like what we do,” Sonny Butterworth, a senior analyst for a defense intelligence company said. “But breaking the law in order to win an argument online is too much. I’d like to ask all of them: please, never do that!”
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/08/05/tank-plan-leaks-war-thunder/
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/classified-challenger-tank-specs-leaked-online-for-videogame/
