The developers of War Thunder issued an apology to the public after one of the game's artwork seemingly depicted one of the worst NASA Space Shuttle disasters in history.
The image referenced is one that showed the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in one of War Thunder's loading screens. The combat MMO was first released in 2013 for console and PC and features real-world planes, tanks, and battleships.
War Thunder Devs Apologize
(Photo : Gaijin Entertainment / Screenshot taken from Steam)
In War Thunder, players take part in large-scale conflicts onboard their favorite vehicles to triumph against players. Developer Gaijin Entertainment has continued to update the game for more than a decade in order to expand the online war simulator.
The developer frequently adds new loading screen artwork after introducing new patches to War Thunder. But the most recent of these that players have seen added an image that featured a real-world explosion that resulted in the death of seven astronauts.
Some players reported on June 22, 2024, that they spotted a large explosion in the background of a new piece of War Thunder artwork. It seemingly looked similar to the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, according to Kotaku.
Soon after it was first spotted by players, Gaijin Entertainment immediately issued an apology for the alleged "mistake" on their part.
Community manager Magazine2 posted on War Thunder's official forums, saying that they accidentally used the explosion from the Challenger disaster in one of the game's key art images.
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He continued to say that they were asking for players' forgiveness, noting that the picture was part of an aerial explosion reference pack that was used by the studio's artists. Magazine2 argued that the context was lost.
The community manager then continued to explain that the developers will work on altering the artwork "as soon as we can." Gaijin Entertainment also said that it will take "measures to ensure" that this type of error will not happen again in the future.
NASA Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster
Additionally, a different community manager for War Thunder, Oxy, issued another similar apology on Reddit. They added that the key art showing the Challenger explosion will be changed on June 24, 2024, said MSN.
The disaster in question occurred in 1986 when NASA's Space Shuttle Challenger, only 73 seconds into its flight, exploded. The shuttle had seven crew members aboard, including a school teacher, who were instantly killed.
While the situation itself is not something that anyone should be laughing about, there have been worse things being done by some War Thunder players. In some of the game's forums, they went on to share real, classified information about warships and planes as part of their arguments for balance tweaks.
This is something that has been happening so many times that Wikipedia already has an entire section dedicated to covering all of the instances. It was an unfortunate set of events that led to the popular war simulator mistakenly referencing one of the worst disasters in NASA's history.
The situation comes nearly four decades after the fatal explosion that is considered to be the first fatal in-flight accident in U.S. spacecraft history, according to Insider Gaming.
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