Gaijin Entertainment
Video games have the potential to spawn some incredibly heated online debates between people who will go to great lengths to prove they’re right. That includes a War Thunder player who shared classified military secrets on a forum to firm up their argument—which is somehow far from the first time that’s happened.
The word “gamer” has become a fairly loaded one thanks to the many stereotypes associated with people who devote a good chunk of their lives to playing video games, so while I don’t want to paint enjoyers of that particular hobby with a wide brush, I think it would be fair to suggest a significant chunk of them tend to be very passionate about the titles they’ve poured countless hours into.
You’d be hard-pressed to find many casual fans of War Thunder, the combat simulator that was released more than a decade ago and has attracted a legion of dedicated players who are drawn to a title known for its devotion to realism and fairly painstaking attention to the detail when it comes to the design and specs of the planes, tanks, and other vehicles that can be piloted.
War Thunder boasts a dedicated forum that’s regularly home to some pretty heated debates amongst its players, including many who come from a military background and are intimately familiar with the real-life versions of the virtual combat machines in the game.
The forum has a rule that explicitly bans posts containing classified and “export-restricted” military information for reasons that should be fairly obvious, but that hasn’t prevented more than a dozen incidents where War Thunder players have uploaded documents civilians aren’t supposed to have access to in order to prove their point.
According to The UK Defence Journal, we were treated to the latest in a surprisingly long string of violations earlier this month thanks to an argument concerning the radar capabilities of the jet known as the Eurofighter Typhoon.
The debate in question involved the CAPTOR-M and CAPTOR-E radar systems, which respectively harness mechanical scanning and an electronic method that’s more efficient and boasts a longer range.
A disagreement over technical details eventually led to a user posting classified documents obtained from the Italian Ministry of Defence, which were swiftly deleted by a moderator who was once again forced to remind people they’re not allowed to do that.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t respect the lengths the rulebreaker was willing to go to in order to win an argument online, and if history is any indication, they won’t be the last one to pull a similar move.