The flight simulation War Thunder was supposed to be handled by the air output of the major competitor World of Tanks. However, War Thunder triumphed against World of Airplanes in the air and is now pushing into the core territory of the competitor with Ground Forces, into tank combat.
In a report by the English gaming magazine Polygon.com, the 33-year-old CEO of War Thunder, Anton Yudintsev, talks about the success story of the free-to-play game. A few years ago, it didn’t look like he would even have a game at all. Only three months after War Thunder was released on PC in 2012, the major competitor Wargaming announced their own air combat simulator “World of Airplanes”. Yudintsev said, according to the article on polygon.com: “People asked us if we even had a chance. They are such a big company. They have so many players, so much money, so many resources. They told us we would fail. Wargaming publicly stated that we would go under as soon as they released their game.”
Yudintsev: You cannot buy players. Even if you have a lot of money and great resources, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will be successful. You still need a good game.
Today, according to the article, War Thunder has ten times as many players on their servers as World of Warplanes at any time. Now, with Ground Forces, the tank expansion of War Thunder is on the horizon. Yudintsev is turning the tables and going on the counter-offensive. Although Ground Forces is currently still in beta with only 60,000 users, the author of the Polygon article believes in the success of the underdog.
When asked about the rivalry with Wargaming, Yudintsev downplays it: “We don’t pay attention to our competitors and try to do what they do or don’t do. We are making the game that feels good for us.”
We have addressed the gameplay differences between the two rivals in this article: War Thunder or World of Tanks: Who is tougher?
