Not for the first time this year – well for the ninth time this year in fact, players of war sim War Thunder have been posting military documents on the official forum of Gaijin Entertainment’s game.
Eurogamer reports that training manuals for the Norinco VT-4 tank were posted online on the 11th of December, followed a day later by a manual for the M2A2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.
While both documents are not classified, the Bradley one, in particular, is ‘export controlled’. Both documents were quickly removed by forum moderators.
Gaijin founder Anton Yudintsev pointed out that the M2A2 Bradley manual had been posted elsewhere before it landed at War Thunder saying, “We did our part in helping to limit the leak (but) We can do nothing with what’s happening on other platforms.
Initially, military documents were posted to highlight errors in the vehicles in the game but it now seems like it is becoming a meme to dump sensitive information into the forums.
Cyberdaily reported that the Chinese VT-4 tank crew manual appeared to be for a Thai version of the tank and focused on its autoloader and performance speed and is readily available.
These leaks follow the posting of documents relating to the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and the Eurofighter Typhoon DA7 earlier this year
War Thunder was first released in 2012 as an open beta where it stayed for four years before an official release in 2016. It is a free-to-play military simulator offering both land and air combat. More advanced weaponry and vehicles can be purchased to improve the base offerings, It is believed to have 30 million subscribers and sees generally 75,000 players playing at any one time.
The gaming industry has been beset by a leaking culture in 2023, with the trailer for GTA6 leaked ahead of its premiere, right down to the dumping of the contents of the Insomniac Games server onto the internet by hackers.
Featured image: Gaijin Entertainment
