Here we are again, folks. For the third time in two years, a War Thunder fan has been caught leaking classified military documents on the game's official forums.
Available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, War Thunder has historically seen some heated online arguments. Sure, none of these fans have had malicious intent, but still: Leaking military secrets in an attempt to convince developers to change in-game stats? Probably not the best way to state your case.
This time around, a player shared armament schematics for a Chinese Type 96 Main Battle Tank. Swiftly banning this user and deleting the post, Gaijin Entertainment released this statement to Kotaku:
"Publishing classified information on any vehicle of any nation at War Thunder forums is clearly prohibited, and the game developers never use it in their work. While we understand that our players want the game to be as realistic as possible, we’re kindly asking them not to do anything illegal and jeopardize their safety, as well as safety of our community team members."
Continuing on, Gaijin explain that the development staff "do their best to research information on vehicles using legally available tools." Urging fans not to keep doing this, it finishes by explicitly stating "scandals like this are clearly not useful for our efforts."
War Thunder's forums have stories to tell
War Thunder's forums were initially graced with classified secrets back in June 2021, when an argument broke out around the game's depiction of the Challenger 2. Stating that this interpretation was incorrect, forum user Pyrophoric posted Challenger 2 documents and screenshots to prove a point. Unsurprisingly, these were soon deleted.
Come September 2021, a second incident occurred when another argument broke out on the game’s forums. This time, it revolved around France’s Leclerc Main Battle Tank. trying to win the argument, a user posted part of the tank's manual -- and once again, the information was quickly deleted.
It should go without saying, but War Thunder forum users: Please, don't carelessly breach your country's official secrets act. No matter how badly you want to win the argument, it just isn't worth it.
