GamesSimWar ThunderWar Thunder somehow released official art with the debris cloud of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster as backgroundWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
GamesSimWar ThunderWar Thunder somehow released official art with the debris cloud of the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster as backgroundWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Gaijin Entertainment)
Usually it’s Gaijin Entertainment that’s mopping up the mess, sternly reminding players not to leak stuff with potentially severe real-world consequences. But now Gaijin itself has made a colossal and unforced error linked to a real world tragedy.
The latest War Thunder event titled “Seek & Destroy” comes witha new piece of key artfeaturing three separate images of aircraft in combat. Behind one can be seen a distinctively shaped debris cloud, which features individual debris trails. This unusual shape is one of the most distinctive debris clouds in history: the immediate aftermath ofthe Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
Challenger launched in January 1986. Shortly afterwards the shuttle disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean and broke apart, with all seven crew members killed. It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft in flight, and saw the entire shuttle program put on hiatus during a government investigation. It is one of those tragedies that remains a scar on the American psyche.
“We’ll be altering this artwork as soon as we can and will take measures to ensure that this doesn’t repeat again in the future.”
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This is not the first nor will be the last time that unauthorised imagery accidentally finds its way into a videogame, though this easily ranks among the worst examples seen. The first episode of Telltale’s Batman game (2017) showed an image ofthe body of Andrei Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, who wasmurdered in Ankarain 2016. Going even further back Law & Order: Double or Nothing (2003) was somehow released containing a still from CCTV footage ofthe murdered toddler James Bulger.
Having previously investigated the Telltale example, in that case the explanation from every industry professional I spoke to was the same: Someone in Telltale’s art department had googled “assassination”, taken a picture of Karlov from near the top of the results, and used it as a background placeholder while constructing the scene in question. That individual had never gotten around to replacing the placeholder (no doubt Telltale’s infamously brutal schedules didn’t help), and the other parts of the process that should’ve picked it up failed to do so before release.
At the time, the images of Karlov’s assassination travelled the world: partly because the incident took place in an art gallery and the photographs are striking in that context. But the Challenger disaster, even almost four decades later, is globally infamous on another level. No-one would dream of implying that Gaijin’s done this deliberately but, nevertheless, it has done it. At the very least this suggests a level of carelessness about key assets that must be addressed, lest it end up in this situation again.
I have contacted Gaijin’s press office asking for comment and about what these “measures” to prevent a repeat may be. I’ll update this article with any response.
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