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War Thunder dev apologises for using Challenger explosion in key art

War Thunder dev apologises for using Challenger explosion in key art

Gaijin Entertainment, the developer of popular military sim title War Thunder, has issued an apology after it featured an explosion from the Challenger shuttle in new key art. 

In a post on the game's forum – as spotted by PCGamesN – the studio said that it was going to be changing the artwork and implementing steps to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't happen again. The rather distinctive explosion from the Challenger disaster was featured in the background of key art for War Thunder's new Seek and Destroy update. 

“We have accidentally used the explosion from the Challenger disaster in one of our key art images. Please accept our sincere apologies for this. The picture was part of an aerial explosion reference pack used by our artists and the context was lost,” community manager magazine2 wrote on the game's forums. 

“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." 

Challenger infamously exploded one minute into a flight on January 28th, 1986. 


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.