Here we are again, friends. For the third time in two years, a War Thunder fan has been caught leaking classified military documents to the game's official forums.
Available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, War Thunder has historically seen heated discussions online, sure, none of those fans had malicious intent, but still. Leaking military secrets to try and convince developers to tweak game stats? Probably not the best way to present your case.
This time, a player shared the armament schematics of a Chinese Type 96 main battle tank. Quickly banning this user and removing the post, Gaijin Entertainment issued this statement to Kotaku (opens in a new tab):
"Posting classified information about any vehicle of any nation on the 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 ask that you kindly that you are not doing anything illegal and compromising your safety and that of our community team members."
Continuing, Gaijin explains that the development team "makes every effort to find vehicle information using legally available tools." Urging fans not to continue doing this, he ends by explicitly stating that "scandals like this are clearly not helpful to our efforts."
The War Thunder forums have stories to tell
The War Thunder forums were originally honored with classified secrets in June 2021. A dispute broke out over the game's portrayal of Challenger 2. Claiming this interpretation was incorrect, forum user Pyrophoric posted screenshots of the Challenger docs 2 to prove a point. As expected, these were quickly removed.
In September 2021, a second incident occurred when another dispute broke out on the game's forums, this time involving the French main battle tank Leclerc. Trying to win the argument, this user posted part of the tank manual and, again, was promptly removed.
This should go without saying, but for War Thunder forum users, do not carelessly violate your country's official secrets law. No matter how much you want to win the argument, it's just not worth it.