The current conflict between the US/Israel and Iran has seen an abundance of footage circulating online: some shared directly from official sources, some legitimate, and some of more questionable origin. A viral example of the latter is a clip that claims to show an American ship shooting down an Iranian fighter jet, which has now been debunked as footage from the military simulation game War Thunder.
The clip has been shared by various accounts on platforms such as X, with this example garnering over seven million views. An apparently damaged US warship can be seen with all guns blazing, firing at a nearby Iranian jet, eventually hitting the jet and causing it to explode and crash near the ship. The post was shared by figures including the Republican Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, in which he captioned the clip with “Bye bye” (Abbott has since deleted this).
It is strange that this game footage seems to have convinced some people—as a community note on X points out, no Iranian plane attack on a US ship (at least of the type depicted in the clip) has occurred during the conflict. Iran did claim on March 1 it had struck the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier, but this has been denied by the Pentagon.
Konstantin Govorun, Gaijin Entertainment’s head of PR, confirmed to AFP that “yes, this looks like War Thunder footage.”
This is not an exceptional incident, but a trend in contemporary warfare. Last year, as war loomed in the Middle East, clips of both Arma 3 and War Thunder were used as propaganda, with even the Israeli military getting involved to clarify “the footage is fake.”
Arma 3 especially is often mis-used in this way, thanks to its realistic visual style. Developer Bohemia Interactive said in 2023 it is “disheartening for us to see the game we all love being used in this way”, and after repeated instances of it happening has created guidelines to help people distinguish between real and fake footage. Here they are:
- Very low resolution – Even dated smartphones have the ability to provide videos in HD quality. Fake videos are usually of much lower quality, and are intentionally pixelated and blurry to hide the fact that they’re taken from a video game.
- Very low resolution – To add dramatic effect, these videos are often not captured in-game. Authors film a computer screen with the game running in low quality and with an exaggerated camera shake.
- Often takes place in the dark / at night – The footage is often dark in order to hide the video game scene’s insufficient level of detail.
- Mostly without sound – In-game sound effects are often distinguishable from reality.
- Doesn’t feature people in motion – While the game can simulate the movement of military vehicles relatively realistically, capturing natural looking humans in motion is still very difficult, even for the most modern of games.
- Heads Up Display (HUD) elements visible – Sometimes the game’s user interfaces, such as weapon selection, ammunition counters, vehicle status, in-game messages, etc. are visible. These commonly appear at the edges or in the corners of the footage.
- Unnatural particle effects – Even the most modern games have a problem with naturally depicting explosions, smoke, fire, and dust, as well as how they’re affected by environmental conditions. Look for oddly separated cloudlets in particular.
- Unrealistic vehicles, uniforms, equipment – People with advanced military equipment knowledge can recognize the use of unrealistic military assets for a given conflict. For instance, in one widely spread fake video, the US air defense system C-RAM shoots down a US A-10 ground attack plane. Units can also display non-authentic insignias, camouflage, etc.
The official White House X account, meanwhile, has posted a Call of Duty clip mixed with real-life footage of its attacks on Iran.
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