Third Times The Charm? War Thunder Forums get yet another leak of Classified Military Documents

[rcmaehl]

Summary

Classified documents about Chinese ZTZ99 tank were leaked to the War Thunder community to win an argument. This is the THIRD time Classified documents were leaked to the War Thunder Community.

 

Quotes

Quote

Fans of... War Thunder are so passionate about the game that they’ve taken to sharing actual classified schematics... in an effort to win arguments with complete strangers online. Now there is another instance of someone... leaking classified military documents to make sure that their tank video game more accurately conforms with reality. The latest incident... involves information in Mandarin on the penetrator section of a Chinese tank round along with a technical diagram. This isn’t the first time these forums have become an outlet for technical leaks. In July 2021, someone... uploaded some documents to the War Thunder forums detailing the technical specifications of Britain’s Challenger 2 tank. Presumably, this was in an effort to prove that the game had gotten details wrong about the tank. A few months later, there was a second leak, this time because it was extremely important to someone out there that the French LeClerc Main Battle Tank have a more accurate depiction in a video game where people wage simulated war. The most recent leak... from someone with access to the latest technical manuals from China’s People’s Liberation Army, occurred because a user wanted the game’s Chinese battle tanks to have better in-game stats. Gaijin Entertainment banned the user, telling Kotaku that, “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.”

 

My thoughts

It seems, yet again, that Murphy's Law is REALLY REALLY effective at getting people to prove you wrong, no matter what country or region you're from. I doubt this is the last time this will happen as the community really seems hellbent on accuracy, but only time will tell.

 

Sources

Kotaku

Task and Purpose (Quote Source)

[tim0901]

 

I have no words...

[Lightwreather]

Wait, this kind of thing happens often?

wha…

HOW!?

[PeachGr]

Was he right, or wasn't he? 

[Mihle]

*facepalm*

[Ydfhlx]

The best thing is that... War Thunder devs just don't care. They don't change things even if documents about it are in public domain, such as pictures of aircraft carrying specific ordnance.

 

And they certainly cannot legally use classified documents to change things in the game.

[Rauten]

Well, someone's going straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 2000 yuans.

 

The absurd limits people will reach to win an online argument... and it just keeps happening!

[Fasterthannothing]

You know a bunch of poor souls from multiple countries military are now tasked with reading the forms to check for leaks. 

[DieJagdente]

Is anybody thinking about us Mods in such situations.. I ended up on the Wikipedia page even

[rcmaehl]

1 hour ago, DieJagdente said:

Is anybody thinking about us Mods in such situations.. I ended up on the Wikipedia page even

OH NO

[BachChain]

The new espionage strategy: make a realistic war simulator, but give all of the foreign weapons deliberately wrong stats

[Shreyas1]

11 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Wait, this kind of thing happens often?

wha…

HOW!?

This is apparently the 6th time

 

There were (as of now)

1 Eurocopter Tiger leak

2 Challenger 2 Leaks

1 French Leclerc Leak

1 Chinese APFSDS leak

 

and this is a second time for the Chinese APFSDS

[rcmaehl]

32 minutes ago, Shreyas1 said:

This is apparently the 6th time

 

There were (as of now)

1 Eurocopter Tiger leak

2 Challenger 2 Leaks

1 French Leclerc Leak

1 Chinese APFSDS leak

 

and this is a second time for the Chinese APFSDS

[CarlBar]

15 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

It seems, yet again, that Murphy's Law is REALLY REALLY effective at getting people to prove you wrong, no matter what country or region you're from. I doubt this is the last time this will happen as the community really seems hellbent on accuracy, but only time will tell.

 

 

It's not that the community is hellbent on accuracy, it's that the devs will go "it's not supported by any documents so we won;t make any changes", combined with a tendency to engage is some seriously silly stuff when they stat up vehicles, it's fairly common where publicity available documentation exists to find numerous errors, and some stats, (any form of composite armour is a major offender), have vastly lower values on tanks for which they don't have data than for one for which they do have data.

 

They've also been known to have vehicles come out that have fundamentally broken mechanics that range from works poorly to doesn't work at all, (recent video below of the former). And they reguarly change their standards on what is and is not an acceptable document for a given change, often at times when it lets them ignore a sudden new piece of evidence on somthing. Frankly between various things they've done i have very little trust in them when they claim they've checked and document X is completely classified. 

 

 

9 hours ago, SlidewaysZ said:

You know a bunch of poor souls from multiple countries military are now tasked with reading the forms to check for leaks. 

 

Maybe, but as i said above i suspect a lot of these so called leaks aren't leaks at all, and i'd bet the ones that are where all sourced from elsewhere on the web. Being based in Belarus they're probably under serious scrutiny atm anyway, but i doubt anyone at the major intelligence agencies is majorly worried about leaks there.

[Shreyas1]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

 

It's not that the community is hellbent on accuracy, it's that the devs will go "it's not supported by any documents so we won;t make any changes", combined with a tendency to engage is some seriously silly stuff when they stat up vehicles, it's fairly common where publicity available documentation exists to find numerous errors, and some stats, (any form of composite armour is a major offender), have vastly lower values on tanks for which they don't have data than for one for which they do have data.

 

They've also been known to have vehicles come out that have fundamentally broken mechanics that range from works poorly to doesn't work at all, (recent video below of the former). And they reguarly change their standards on what is and is not an acceptable document for a given change, often at times when it lets them ignore a sudden new piece of evidence on somthing. Frankly between various things they've done i have very little trust in them when they claim they've checked and document X is completely classified. 

 

Stuff like this, along with the absolutely horrendous progression, is why I won't play war thunder lmao. The most I actually do in that game is test fly planes. Which is a shame, because I actually enjoy the air gameplay quite a bit.

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, CarlBar said:

They've also been known to have vehicles come out that have fundamentally broken mechanics that range from works poorly to doesn't work at all, (recent video below of the former). And they reguarly change their standards on what is and is not an acceptable document for a given change, often at times when it lets them ignore a sudden new piece of evidence on somthing. Frankly between various things they've done i have very little trust in them when they claim they've checked and document X is completely classified. 

I played WarThunder for a while and I found the broken mechanics rather annoying, but the complaints of some broken mechanics is also a bit weird IMO, as the game has much more serious issues like terrible balancing and the tier progression is a painful grind unless you buy the pay2win vehicles. I stopped playing because of the balance not because of the vehicle mechanics issues, and the devs don't seem to listen either, which is sad because I liked how tanks played much more than World of Tanks.

[Middcore]

Wargaming on the other hand always has "sekrit dokumints" to support whatever unbalanced shit they want to do, or they just put vehicles in their games that never existed and could never have existed in real life so they can make up whatever stats they want.

 

Both companies make the worst kind of unbalanced, grindy, freemiun p2w shit, but they have a guaranteed audience because military vehicle nerds have nowhere else to go (source: am a military vehicle nerd, used to play WT, WoT, and WoWs).

[Vishera]

19 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Wait, this kind of thing happens often?

wha…

HOW!?

There are plenty of people who are passionate about those tanks and want them represented as accurately as possible in the game.

People have fights about those things and those who happened to have classified documents in their hands will use them in the heat of the fight to prove their point...

[DieJagdente]

WELL AGAIN a chinese MBT Manual was leaked just now. I hope no Newspaper saw that...

[Kronoton]

On 6/3/2022 at 9:52 AM, Rauten said:

 

Well, someone's going straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 2000 yuans.

 

 

 

This might have been the case for the British and French leaks but in China? Even more if it was an active member of the army.....

 

So not just Murphy's law but also a Darwin award.

[DieJagdente]

Im just waiting for the day someone leaks the Abrams Manual because he keeps getting roflstomped by Leopards 2 in game...

 

 

[Kisai]

On 6/2/2022 at 10:40 PM, J-from-Nucleon said:

Wait, this kind of thing happens often?

wha…

HOW!?

Never underestimate nerds passions for their pet topic. Especially if they work in that field.

 

Military stuff has an extra dangerous problem though. Because people are passionate about "their country"'s military stuff, they play their own country's gear, and end up at some disadvantage because the developer didn't guess the right specs for their chosen military toy.

 

The fact is, the passionate nerds, are the ones you shouldn't be putting in the military. They will leak things because they want to win arguments that don't count for much of anything. I somehow doubt that military secrets are being leaked by people who have anything to lose by doing so. Leaking American secrets would be bad, leaking Chinese secrets would be probably be deadly for the leaker.

 

Who needs military spies when you can just poorly represent the target in a game and some nerd will try to prove it wrong by leaking the specs themselves.

[williamcll]

On 6/4/2022 at 4:06 AM, CarlBar said:

 

It's not that the community is hellbent on accuracy, it's that the devs will go "it's not supported by any documents so we won;t make any changes", combined with a tendency to engage is some seriously silly stuff when they stat up vehicles, it's fairly common where publicity available documentation exists to find numerous errors, and some stats, (any form of composite armour is a major offender), have vastly lower values on tanks for which they don't have data than for one for which they do have data.

 

They've also been known to have vehicles come out that have fundamentally broken mechanics that range from works poorly to doesn't work at all, (recent video below of the former). And they reguarly change their standards on what is and is not an acceptable document for a given change, often at times when it lets them ignore a sudden new piece of evidence on somthing. Frankly between various things they've done i have very little trust in them when they claim they've checked and document X is completely classified. 

 

 

 

Maybe, but as i said above i suspect a lot of these so called leaks aren't leaks at all, and i'd bet the ones that are where all sourced from elsewhere on the web. Being based in Belarus they're probably under serious scrutiny atm anyway, but i doubt anyone at the major intelligence agencies is majorly worried about leaks there.

Well, the STRV wouldn't really be a military secret because A: it's old and B:Russians have one.

[Sir Asvald]

*Laughs in Wargaming* - creating fake tanks.

 

[Imbadatnames]

Dunno what they could get from a page on an AESP of the cr2, especially the tech description. Thing is stupidly long and unhelpful. Imagine Chinese docs would be the same.