Summary
Let’s take a break fromWar Thunder fans leaking classified military documentsonthe forumsfor a second and look at the marketing, which is coming under fire for a completely different reason.
As reported byPCGamesN, developer Gaijin Entertainment accidentally used footage from the 1986 Challenger disaster in the new ‘Seek and Destroy’ key art. Specifically, the smoke trail from the space shuttle’s crash.
The picture was part of an aerial explosion reference pack used by our artists and the context was lost.
“Hey, guys. We have accidentally used the explosion from the Challenger disaster in one of our key art images. Please accept our sincere apologies for this,” community manager ‘magazine2’ wrote on the War Thunder forums. “The picture was part of an aerial explosion reference pack used by our artists and the context was lost.”
“We will be altering this artwork as soon as we can and will take measures to ensure that this doesn’t repeat again in the future,” added Gaijin Entertainment.
What Is The 1986 Challenger Disaster?
In 1986, NASA launched a shuttle to study Halley’s Comet and even brought along schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe as part of the Teacher in Space program.
Since there was a teacher on board, there was even more media buzz than usual, and so the launch was streamed across schools in America. What this ultimately meant was that the crew members' immediate deaths were shown to many children across the country as the shuttle broke apart just 73 seconds into flight, killing everyone on board.
It was so disastrous that the Space Shuttle program immediately underwent a 32-month hiatus, leading to the formation of NASA’s Office of Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance. Given that it was a televised disaster cemented into the country’s consciousness almost overnight, it’s understandable that flippant use of footage from the event would be cause for backlash in a video game.
