War Thunder Apologizes for Controversial Key Art

Highlights

• Gaijin Entertainment apologized for using Challenger disaster imagery in War Thunder key art, promising a quick replacement.
• War Thunder has faced various controversies, from review bombing to classified leaks.
• Developer Gaijin Entertainment’s upcoming change in artwork should not impact players’ ability to play the game.

Gaijin Entertainment, the developer behind War Thunder, apologized after discovering that its Seek & Destroy key art used imagery from the fatal 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. A new image will replace the original later, though information on when the War Thunder team will do that has not been shared.

War Thunder is a vehicular combat game where players control vehicles from different war eras. It has only grown since 2012, with a new record of over 250,000 concurrent players achieved in February 2024. In those 12 years, the game has also attracted a lot of attention because of several different controversies. War Thunder has been review bombed as part of an in-game change to a feature, had classified document leaks in its official forums, and has been used as a combat simulator in the military. The 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was a completely separate event in which seven crew members aboard the Challenger lost their lives when the ship exploded 73 seconds after take-off. The mission was intended to be both the 10th flight for the orbiter and the 25th flight for the Space Shuttle fleet, making it an incredibly important launch to watch live.

The War Thunder key art incident was originally discovered on Reddit and later reached the game’s official forum, where a community manager acknowledged it. The Reddit user explained that they thought that the imagery looked familiar and, upon further research, discovered the similarity. The discovery was then moved to War Thunder’s official forum, where after only one day, community manager magazine2 apologized and revealed that the imagery was part of an aerial explosion reference pack.

Controversial Key Art Makes It to War Thunder Banner

As previously explained, this isn’t the first time that developer Gaijin Entertainment has been in hot water. Several War Thunder forum users posted technical documentation and flight manuals only to have them immediately taken down due to their illegality and classified status in several countries. The latest incident occurred in December 2023 when the manual concerning the turret assembly of the M2A2 Bradley was leaked.

War Thunder has already apologized for the mistake and promised to swiftly replace it and ensure it doesn’t happen again. The Seek & Destroy update that contains the controversial imagery doesn’t involve rocket ships, though it’s still not a good look for the developer. However, there’s a chance that new War Thunder players might begin to reconsider playing in the future. Fortunately, the change in the War Thunder artwork won’t interrupt anything within the game.