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War Thunder Fans Declare War on Gaijin Entertainment, Review Bomb Their Steam Page

So, you decided to make Gaijin Entertainment's War Thunder your go-to vehicle-based combat simulator, huh? You poor unfortunate soul, you. Not that we could blame you; it's a fantastic game on paper. One with more tanks and aircraft to grind through than most can manage in one lifetime without a premium account. But a profound lack of interst in calls to change the War Thunder in-game economy have one of the most prolific free-to-play games outside of League of Legends on the ropes by its own fanbase. This is the story of the people at large vs. Gaijin Entertainment. Safe to say, things just got ugly.
Gaijin Entertainment's War Thunder 75 photos
Photo: Gaijin Entertainment (Edited by autoevolution)
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But first, for those who know nothing about War Thunder or Gaijin Entertainment, here is a quick refresher for you. Announced in 2011 and released two years later on August 15th, 2013, War Thunder's mission was simple on paper. This mission was to provide the most varied, eclectic, and numerous collection of playable military aircraft, armored vehicles, tanks, helicopters, and surface vessel riff-raff among any other single game in history. From the mid-interwar period, or even further back for surface vessels, through World War II, the Cold War, to the computerized jet age, there wasn't much of anything egregious to complain about in the early days of the War Thunder community.

Indeed, through the earliest War Thunder patch releases up until around the mid-2010s, there was very little bad that could be said about War Thunder's gameplay mechanics, if not always its in-game economy. But it was Gaijin Entertainment's stern obsession with Golden Eagles and Silver Lions (in-game currency) that got the ball rolling towards the modern relationship between War Thunder fans and its now Budapest-based development team. One of mutual bad-blood and sometimes even downright contempt for each other online.

As the list of unique and fun-to-play military vehicles only grew with each subsequent content update, it would appear Gaijin Entertainment decided to go all in on prioritizing the purchase of Golden Eagles with real-world money to then use to boost research for vehicles you're working towards in one of the game's ten current national tech trees. Alternatively, you could convert these Golden Eagles into Silver Lions that players can use to directly purchase air, ground, and sea vehicle components as well as buying and crewing said vehicle.

Think of it like the dollars and cents of the War Thunder universe. If that sounds like an easy system to exploit and take advantage of players with, you'd be dead on the money. As the 2010s rolled into the 2020s, Gaijin would begin systematically de-incentivizing more-fun-to-play but not-all-that-marketable War Thunder game modes like air and ground arcade-battles through drastically bottlenecking the number of Silver Lions earned during even very successful rounds of these battles. Thus alienating a large group of War Thunder faithful who had little interest in having the most realistic combat experience possible. In short, people who just wanted to have some fun in War Thunder's arcade mode often found themselves at the butt of jokes, even by other War Thunder players who only play realistic battles.

War Thunder J35 Premium Jet
Photo: Benny Kirk/autoevolution
Instead, more intense, mentally and physically demanding game modes like air and ground realistic battles became preffered by the community. Could this have been to draw over players from more intense simulator-style combat games like Arma and DCS World? Only the big-wigs in Gaijin's Budapest headquarters seem to have the answer there. Indeed, game-mode incentivization alone wouldn't have been such a headache if not for Gaijin's insistence on incentivizing purchasing "premium account time," which rewards you more Silver Lions and battle XP than one would accrue during a mission without it.

Not only that, but premium time tends to fix War Thunder's most glaring issue, the unending, painful, relentless grind. Whether using premium time or not, working up the more complex national tech trees like the Americans, the British, and the Soviets can feel like a full-time career at a time most gamers aged 18 to 35 have better things to do, like have a job and pay their bills, than sit around waiting weeks, sometimes upwards of a month just to transition from piston-engine fighters to the very wimpiest early jet fighters.

It's this profound disregard on the part of Gaijin Entertainment to consider the circumstances and the socioeconomic backgrounds of its player base that have prompted a recent mass negative-review bombing on War Thunder's Steam profile page where the fed-up, long-time faithful of the game release proverbial pressure valves full of grievances some players have held for half a decade or even longer. Of course, Gaijin Entertainment couldn't stay quiet about such negative remarks forever. On May 19th, 2023, the company released a press statement responding to the considerable backlash to War Thunder's ruined economy.

This press release, released via the Steam desktop app, is paraphrased as follows "Dear players, We heard your recent feedback on the changes planned to the economy of War Thunder and, as you already know, have decided to cancel them. This has been our first step in addressing your concerns, and it will not be the last," the press release stated. "We will announce the content of the dedicated economy update in advance, explain in detail the essence of all changes and collect feedback on them before we implement them in the game. We have one common goal: to make War Thunder better and make players happy and the game more popular. Therefore, we will do everything possible so that we understand and support each other on the way to this goal."

War Thunder \- Danger Zone update
Photo: Gaijin Entertainment
Whether or not Gaijin Entertainment truly heeds the advice of its fanbase and addresses issues with a corrupt and feckless economy but also a very obvious Soviet/Russian bias remains to be seen. But at the end of the day, it's all the more sad because War Thunder was once the pound-for-pound greatest vehicular combat game ever developed. With just a few foolish mistakes by Gaijin Entertainment, almost a full decade's worth of goodwill built up by one of the most loyal fanbases in wargaming is fidning all its hard work going up in smoke.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that Gaijin's Modus operandi of luring new players in with $70 premium jet fighters, having them hate the gameplay at such high battle ratings, and then never playing the game again, can sustain the game through such a ferocious torrent of negative press levied at the company. Whatever happens, best believe you'll hear about it right here on autoevolution. Oh, and don't even get us started on Gaijin's supposed ties to Russian oligarchs, that's a can of worms for some other time. And then all those pesky military document Discord leaks? Don't even get us started.
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