War Thunder developer apologizes after using Challenger disaster explosion in key art

War Thunder developer Gaijin Entertainment has apologized after using the explosion from the 1986 Challenger disaster as key art for the World War II massively multiplayer online game.

A forum post by Community Manager Magazine2 stated that Gaijin used the explosion “accidentally” as it was part of a reference pack used by his artists. The explosion, which killed all seven crew members of the Space Shuttle Challenger when the spacecraft broke apart 73 seconds after launch, had a rather distinctive shape and was therefore recognized by War Thunder players when it was used in key art.

“Hey guys, we accidentally used the explosion from the Challenger disaster in one of our key art images,” said magazine2. “Please accept our sincere apologies for this. The image was part of an aerial explosion reference package used by our artists and the context was lost.”

“We will change this artwork as soon as possible and take measures to ensure this does not happen again in the future.” Gaijin did not say what the changes would be, and the image remains available on official channels.

This is not the first time that controversy has arisen related to real-life events related to War Thunder. However, the software usually gets into trouble due to real military documents leaking on its forums.

For example, in December 2023, documents related to the M2A2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle were published on the forums. Although they are not classified, they still contained detailed information that the military considers confidential.

In another case, an image of the DTC10-125 tungsten penetrator appeared in June 2022, along with a technical document with detailed specifications. This followed other cases on the War Thunder forums where classified information about the British Challenger 2 main battle tank and the French Leclerc main battle tank were published.

Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter at IGN. He talks about The Witcher all day long.