Game forum leaks military documents

War Thunder players have leaked restricted military documents in the game’s official forum, something that’s become somewhat of a trend.

Players of the online military vehicle simulation game War Thunder have once again leaked restricted military documents, something that’s happened multiple times in the past.

War Thunder has a thriving web forum, where players spend months debating the finer details of particular military vehicles, in the hopes of improving the game’s accuracy and balancing the vehicles’ stats in the game to more accurately reflect real life.

Unfortunately, those players can be a little bit too dedicated to accuracy at times, and there have been multiple instances of players using classified military documents to bolster their arguments.

Previous instances of this occurring were during discussions on the British Challenger 2 main battle tank, the French Leclerc main battle tank, the European Tiger attack helicopter, and the Chinese DTC10-125 anti-armour shells, all of which had classified or restricted documents leaked in the forums.

The latest instance came during a discussion about the F-16 Fighting Falcon, a versatile multi-role fighter jet that’s been in use since 1974. Over 4,500 planes of this type have been built since their introduction, with over 30 nations still actively using the jets.

Users in the War Thunder forums have leaked classified documents in the past. Picture: Gaijin Entertainment

Players had been debating the F-16 for over six months on the War Thunder forum, but the discussion took a sharp turn earlier this week when a user named spacenavy90 posted a document detailing equipment tests for the jet.

The document has since been deleted by forum moderators, but was reportedly no longer classified. While it had been declassified, the distribution of the report is still restricted under US law, since it contains export-restricted data on some of the missiles used on the F-16.

The developer of War Thunder, Gaijin Entertainment, confirmed to Aerotime that the documents were restricted, and asked players to stop posting restricted or classified documents on its forums.

“We always delete posts containing classified or restricted information from our forum as soon as possible,” Gaijin founder Anton Yudintsev told Aerotime, “We forbid our users to share documents like this on our platforms. We remind our users again and again that it’s both illegal and pointless, so they should never do that”.

War Thunder strives for accuracy in its gameplay, which is why players get as heated as they do in the game’s forums. Picture: Gaijin Entertainment

Yudintsev said that Gaijin will never use documents such as the one posted to influence its gameplay design, and that the developers of the game specifically choose not to look at the contents of such documents.

In similar gaming news, it was recently revealed that the US Army wanted Twitch streamers to help drive recruitment. According to internal US Army documents, the military branch planned to spend millions of dollars partnering with Call of Duty-focused Twitch streamers, YouTubers, and even some gaming websites.

It comes as Microsoft has been forced to make more Call of Duty concessions as regulators investigate its planned acquisition of series publisher Activision Blizzard.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.