Classified military info once again leaks out on a tank game forum

Surely this can’t keep happening

The most bonkers pattern in video game leaks has happened again. Not a leak of a video game, mind you. But a leak of classified military information in order to win a fight on an internet forum for War Thunder, a game about tanks.

This is somehow the third time this has happened on the War Thunder forums. The first happened in July 2021, as a War Thunder player posted classified documents in an effort to prove a point about one of the in-game tanks.

Later that year, the same thing happened again. A player got into an argument about a French battle tank, and to win the sparring match, they posted a part of the tank manual. It led to this message from the moderators, via Kotaku: “Guys its not funny to leak classified Documents of modern equipment you put the lives of many on stake who work daily with the Vehicles! Keep in Mind that those documents will be deleted immediately alongside sanctions. Thanks for reading!”

Now, as detailed by the UK Defense Journal, it seems to have happened a third time. A forum user posted documents about a Chinese DTC10-125 round. Forum moderators swiftly removed the post, saying “materials related to the DTC10-125 are classified in China.”

Tanks for the memories

We won’t share the images here, obviously. But it is absolutely wild that this keeps happening. Video game forums can always get a bit weird, but leaking classified info is a bit much.

War Thunder development has since banned the user, and sent a statement over to Kotaku:

“Our community managers immediately banned the user and deleted his post, as the information on this particular shell is still classified in China. Publishing classified information on any vehicle of any nation at 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’re kindly asking them not to do anything illegal and jeopardise their safety, as well as safety of our community team members. The developers of War Thunder do their best to research information on vehicles using legally available tools, and scandals like this are clearly not useful for our efforts.”

It’s good that the team is so swift at handling such a bizarre situation. I’d guess it’s not what they initially signed up for when becoming moderators of a video game forum. Maybe third time’s the charm in teaching War Thunder forum-goers to stop leaking information?