In War Thunder there was a curious incident: An image used graphics based on a real event – an accident in which several people died.
War Thunder is a game that places a particularly high value on realism in many areas – for this, it is loved by the community. But now the developers have become a bit too realistic. They used an image from reality and parts of it as promotional material for the war-themed online game.
This is quite macabre, and the developer is clearly uncomfortable: Because the image is from an explosion in which seven people lost their lives.
Here you can see a gameplay trailer for War Thunder:
What kind of image is this? In a “Key Art” image, which is a prominently used promotional image for new content in the game, a rather striking explosion was noticeable in the background. Large clouds of smoke with smaller wisps of smoke trailing off. Obviously debris falling – remnants of whatever was destroyed.
The explosion is unfortunately not fictional in War Thunder, but comes from a real incident.
Where does the image come from? Parts of the artwork come from the explosion of the Challenger. This was a NASA space shuttle that completed several spaceflights between 1983 and 1986. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle was supposed to launch once more. However, shortly after the launch, the Challenger exploded, resulting in the deaths of its crew of seven astronauts.
The “Challenger disaster” is considered one of the tragic moments in NASA’s history.
This is what War Thunder says: After some players noticed the image, the community manager spoke up in the War Thunder forum and explained:
Hey guys, we accidentally used the explosion from the Challenger disaster in one of our Key Arts. Please accept our sincere apologies for that. The image was part of an image package for air explosion references for our artists, and the context got lost.
We will replace the image as soon as possible and ensure that something like this does not happen again in the future.
War Thunder often generates strange reports
War Thunder is anyway a curious game with a very passionate community that has a nearly fanatical drive for realism. In the past, there have been repeated cases in War Thunder where fans argued about the realism in the game and went deep into the details of tanks. On several occasions, real, secret military documents have been used to support respective viewpoints.
