The military MMO War Thunder is removing country markings on the aircraft and putting them behind a paywall. Apparently, some pilots used them provocatively.
Aircraft can carry “decals”. These are basically images on the wings, identification marks. Now some pilots in War Thunder used this feature to display “patriotic” flags. They applied the colors of a country’s flag on their wings.
That was apparently okay for a long time, but now the Ukraine crisis is causing trouble: The Russian and Ukrainian colors are being used and understood as a kind of “political statement”. According to PcGamesN, this has resulted in players with these flags even being shot at by their own team.
According to developer Gaijin, this is causing discord in War Thunder. Furthermore, others are unhappy that these national colors are being used outside of their historical context.
Therefore, Gaijin has now decided to take the flag decals away from players and place them in the in-game store. There, players can then purchase them for 500 Golden Eagles (3€).
We know many of you love your flags as decals, but right now unfortunately, we are seeing too many players using them in ways that instigate national argument and obviously some players are not happy with the flags being used outside the game’s historical period or that many didn’t even exist there. But since we do not want to remove these opportunities from players who do want them, we decided to implement a procedure that will require more responsibility from a player who wants to make use of them.
From today, the 10th February, all National Flags listed in the flags directory of your decals will be re-set and removed from your inventory in game, they will be available from now on in a similar way as the rest of the decals via purchasing using GE.
Mein MMO says: So … doesn’t that send the wrong signal? It is said that these flags annoy people and that they are obviously being abused. They find that unacceptable – unless someone pays 3€ for it, then they have surely thought about it and show that they really want it?
