By: Joseph Tapia
If you’ve played video games as much as I do, then you’re probably no stranger to the amount of scrutiny they face. They are generally looked down upon by older folk, especially by teachers, parents and preachers. Some people think that video games somehow encourage the worship of Satan and are thus a threat to our society. Video games: a threat to society. Unbelievable, right?
But, as it turns out, one specific video game has become a threat, not necessarily towards the entirety of society, but perhaps to military secrecy. The game in question? War Thunder.
War Thunder is a game developed and published by Gaijin Entertainment that allows players to fight each other while controlling various air, land, and sea vehicles, modeled after real military vehicles from a variety of countries. The game has won plenty of awards and was among the most played games on Steam, a platform from which one can buy and play games. It has millions of players online, so it’s safe to say that the game is pretty popular.
Now you may have initially wondered,“How and why would a video game become a threat to military secrecy?” But this question becomes much easier to answer now that we know what War Thunder is about. As it turns out, players have leaked classified military documents on War Thunder forums during arguments regarding the accuracy of the vehicles in the game compared to their real-life counterparts.
The founder of Gaijin Entertainment, Anton Yudintsev, takes a firm stance against such behavior and says “it’s both illegal and pointless, so they should never do that.” In addition to the leaks that have gone around, there were also some rumors circulating about certain jobs requiring a background check if they found out that applicants played War Thunder. Though, there have been no actual known incidents where this has happened, it’s most likely just a rumor spread for clout or something.
Overall, a bizarre situation indeed. Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch to call this game a threat to military secrecy. I mean, if people are just grabbing these docs and tossing them out to win arguments about realism on the game’s forums, then these documents weren’t that well protected to begin with and were probably not as “classified” or “top secret” as they may seem.
Confidential military documents have also been leaked in other places, aside from War Thunder. For example, documents were reportedly leaked in the popular messaging platform, Discord, on a server (with a name I’m not sure is appropriate to actually write) dedicated to the popular video game “Minecraft” by a user named “Jack The Dripper.” Supposedly, these leaked documents had something to do with the US military and Ukraine and were from the Pentagon itself.
These are the only two examples where classified information was leaked online in somewhat comical situations, at least as far as I’m informed. What I know for certain is that if another document leak occurs, it will struggle to outshine the bizarreness of these two situations.