Gaijin Entertainment's "War Thunder" is a massive military simulation with an emphasis on realism, most notably known for a community that won't stop leaking classified military documents to win a forum debate about virtual tanks. Well, that and the use of footage from the game (without the studio's knowledge) in the background of Russian propaganda clips.

Normally, Gaijin Entertainment would clean up the mess and strictly caution players not to divulge anything that could have serious real-life consequences. But now Gaijin itself has made a terrible and unforced mistake related to a real world tragedy.

The latest War Thunder event, titled "Seek & Destroy," comes with new key art depicting three images of aircraft in combat. Behind one of them can be seen a uniquely shaped debris cloud, characterized by the trajectory of individual pieces of debris. This unusual shape is one of the most distinctive debris clouds in history: just after the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. [Challenger was launched in January 1986. Shortly thereafter, the shuttle disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven crew members. It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft in flight, and the entire shuttle program was suspended while the government investigated. It is one of those tragedies that leave scars on the American psyche.

In other words, it is not a subject that should be incorporated into military simulator artwork. The particular cloud formed by the Challenger is distinctive enough that there is no doubt that the version in "War Thunder" is the same cloud, albeit with minor alterations that are visible to the naked eye, but the gaijin himself has at least come out and come clean.

"We accidentally used the explosion from the Challenger disaster as one of our key art images. The photo was part of a reference pack of aerial explosions used by our artists, and the context was lost."

"We have been working on this for some time now." We will change this artwork as soon as possible and will take steps to ensure this does not happen again in the future."

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This is neither the first nor the last time an unauthorized image has accidentally made its way into a video game, but this easily ranks among the worst examples seen. The first episode of Telltale's "Batman" game (2017) showed an image of the body of Andrei Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, who was murdered in Ankara in 2016. Going further back, "Law & Order" (2003) was somehow "Double or Nothing: Double or Nothing" (2003) somehow included a still from the CCTV footage of murdered toddler James Bulger.

I have investigated the Telltale example before, and in that case, the explanation from every industry expert I spoke to was the same: someone in Telltale's art department googled "assassination," took Karloff's picture from near the top of the results, and used it as a placeholder in the background when constructing the scene in question. They used it as a placeholder. That person was unable to replace the placeholder (no doubt Telltale's notoriously cruel schedule didn't help), and the other parts of the process that should have picked it up could not be replaced before release.

At the time, images of the Karloff assassination circulated around the world. This was partly because the incident took place in an art gallery and the pictures were striking in that context. However, the Challenger disaster is still infamous worldwide on a different level nearly 40 years later. No one would think that the Gaijin did this intentionally, but they did it nonetheless. At the very least, we must address the carelessness regarding our critical assets to ensure that this does not happen again.

I reached out to Gaijin's press office for comment and asked what "steps" were being taken to prevent a recurrence. I will update this post if I get any response.