By: Leela Xie

Since the beginning of 2021, players of “War Thunder” have leaked classified documents related to three tanks of British, French, and Chinese origin in an online forum dedicated to the game.

War Thunder is a free-to-play vehicular combat multiplayer video game published by Gaijin Entertainment. Announced in 2011, it was first released in 2012 as an open beta with a worldwide release in January 2013; it had its official release on the 21st of December 2016. Several of its achievements include winning Best Simulation Game at Gamescom 2013 as well as winning Best Game, Best Developer, Best Technology, and Best Sound at the KRI (the Russian Game Developers Conference) 2013 Awards.

In 2019, War Thunder was one of the most popular games on Steam, with over 25,000 concurrent players. In 2022, the average number of concurrent War Thunder players on Steam was above 50,000, peaking at 76,204 on March 31, 2022. According to the official website, there are more than 50 million registered War Thunder players worldwide.

The publication of the papers was initially reported by the UK Defense Journal, which stated that one user, who posted the manual to a British Challenger 2 tank, stated that he was motivated by a desire to convince a “War Thunder” producer to make the tank more authentic in the game.

Another person, claiming to be a member of a French tank regiment, shared a Leclerc S2 handbook while arguing over the turret rotation speed. The user’s intentions for posting supposedly sensitive information concerning China’s DTC10-125 tank and a piece of material were unclear.

All three posts were removed by Gaijin Entertainment, the game’s primary publisher and the forum’s host. Tank experts haven’t found any source of information that may be of great value to other nations hostile to those countries.

“I didn’t see anything I’d jump up and down about,” According to Steven Zaloga, a senior analyst with the Teal Group, an organization that has been studying tanks for over 50 years and has written dozens of books on armored vehicles and military technologies.

“Tank manuals will be classified at various levels even though a lot of information in it is not especially sensitive,” According to Zaloga, the Leclerc and Challenger tanks have both been shipped to foreign countries, increasing the number of individuals who have access to such weapons. data.

“It was from a user manual, so it’s classified, but it’s distributed fairly widely to anyone who uses the tank, supports it, or maintains it,” said Sonny Butterworth, a senior analyst for land platforms.