Sometimes it takes spies to get military secrets – and sometimes just a bad design in a game …
The computer game “War Thunder” is a war simulation that puts a lot of emphasis on accuracy, especially when it comes to realistic vehicle physics. But now a very committed player has exaggerated incredibly – and published confidential tank plans of the British Army on the Internet!
It was about the British Challenger 2 main battle tank. The player who claims to be a real Challenger 2 tank commander complained that the game model of “War Thunder” differs from reality in many ways. Because of this, the tank in the game is much more susceptible to enemy fire than in real life.
As evidence, he uploaded secret images from the tank’s user manual to an internet forum to show that the tank was “improperly modeled”.
According to the UK news site “UK Defense Journal” the photos were partially blackened. Accordingly, the British Ministry of Defense confirmed to the game developer on request that the documents shown were confidential.
The photos have now been deleted. Looking at screenshots of the documents circulating on the Internet, an army spokesman said that distributing these photos could be punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
It is unclear whether the player is really a British tank commander or whether he got the tank instructions in another way.
But one thing is certain: the player’s efforts were in vain. The posted documents may have been correct, but since they are classified as secret, the developer cannot use them as a basis for new modeling.
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