How Wargaming Sabotages Competition (War Thunder)

Hello everyone,

more and more dirty laundry comes out on Wargaming lately and the more I learn, the more I feel disgusted and disappointed, even by Minsk. Let’s have a look at the latest scandal rocking the Russian server.

It all started with the former Russian community manager Dietolog (specifically for World of Warplanes), who blew the case wide open on his blog. Dietolog is no longer an employee of Wargaming and seeing some events concerning War Thunder lately, he decided to come forward and talk. It could also be his thirst of vengeance against Wargaming, who knows? Motives do not make the truth any different (we’ll talk about that below).

Now, what happened.

Let me get back a bit. Remember when the conditions for being a community manager were leaked? A part of the test were subversive tactics against other games – back then, we had a good laugh, but I am no longer laughing, because it’s all true.

Dietolog, as a community manager, was asked to participate in a subversive hate campaign as early as December 2013 against Wargaming’s competitor, Gaijin Entertainment, the developer of War Thunder. The campain was funnily enough called “G-spot” (WG has a sense of humor, I’ll give them that) and the entire leaked document is accessible here. It’s in Russian of course. The basic udea is that Wargaming-paid hate trolls were supposed to systematically attack Gaijin sites, forums, social network pages and fan pages and spread anti-War Thunder propaganda.

Dietolog states that he did not participate in the subversive operation and only a month later, he left or was fired. The entire campaign represents a reaction of Wargaming to the total failure of World of Warplanes and an attempt to damage the competition by other means than by creating a quality game. Anyway, back to the campaign. I imagine most of you don’t speak Russian (that’s why you are here), so let’s have a look at what the campaign consisted of.

Oh, one last thing, before we start. I reached out to several Wargaming ex-employees and employees. And you know what? It’s all true. Of course, I do not have a proof, so in the end, you’ll have to decide yourself, who to trust – a disgruntled whistleblower, or Wargaming corporate drones, who will deny the whole thing? One advice though: disgruntled employees are the major source of FTR news and Wargaming has MANY. These news are often proven to be correct. So, I wouldn’t discount them when it comes to credibility.

So, about the smearing campaign:

The first part of the document explains the basic pillars, on which WT PR is based on – a basic set of axioms, if you will:

- “We are not Wargaming” (aimed at people who dislike WG for one reason or another)
- “We are elite” (based on the fact WT playerbase is smaller)
- “We are in hostile environment” (based on the eternal “conflict” with Wargaming)

The result is, according to Wargaming, a specific community culture, built on “brotherhood in arms in opposition to Wargaming”. The report also notes further that this culture resulted in a loyal and active core of players and puts it in contrast to World of Warplanes (this refers to the state of the game from December 2013), where the issues with WoWp are identified as alleged WT subversive activities, bot-spam on lower tiers and issues with the game itself (optimization and such). It’s really an interesting analysis, I will translate it completely at one point in the future.

Second part of the document deals with what should be done with it. Wargaming openly proposes to “spam” third party sites, that deal with Wargaming, with negative images and pieces of information (anti-WT hate). This spam would be performed by WG employees in various forms:

- purely negative (spam of anti-WT statements, the list of which is available as a part of the report, no arguments required)
- argued negative (actually arguing for anti-WT statements, involves discussion, requires, apart from the list from the first point also a methodology of using various arguments)
- negative third party images or links (for example, spamming “funny” War Thunder images with mocking comments)

Especially the use of the third point is very wicked – here, Wargaming proposes actively creating videos and screenshots that intentionally distort War Thunder physics and graphics to make them look wacky and unrealistic, but also proposes the creation of videos featuring various cheat modpacks to show how vulnerable War Thunder is to cheating.

Back to points 1 and 2: Wargaming prepared, I shit you not, a HUGE list of various negative pieces of information to spam War Thunder with. Each of these points has its own methodology, eg. a proposed way, how to best use the argument and how exactly to counter any reply by War Thunder staff. Here’s how it works, a few examples:

Example 1 – category: general

Axiom: “War Thunder is shit”
Explanation: an emotional method, used to evoke negative background and feeling, use may vary.
Examples of use: “I saw your Thunder, it’s a bugged piece of shit”.

Note: can be more effective when combined with other arguments, such as referring to Gaijin’s older game “Wings of Prey” and stating it’s the same game, claiming that Gaijin developers were doing nothing for last 6 years and made nothing new, just recycled the old game.

Note 2: can be more effective when combined by a specially WG-made screenshot with wrong graphic settings, based on which it is claimed the graphics are shit

Note 3: can be more effective when claiming that WT plane models are of worse quality than WoWp models (based on a specially made screenshot of comparing both on various settings to make the game look bad

Example 2 – category: WT development sucks

Axiom: “War Thunder stole the XP mechanism from WG”
Explanation: at first, War Thunder copied the XP mechanism from Wargaming
Examples of use: “Gaijin fucked up, they made their own mechanism of XPing that sucked and then they stole the one of WG”

Example 3 – category: WT developers are liars

Axiom: “Gaijin is lying, they are constantly nerfing planes”
Explanation: Gaijin developers claim that they never buff or nerf any planes, but they did.
Example of use: “I will not give a ruble more to these slimes. I bought a prem plane and they nerfed it. I won’t ever buy any planes that got nerfed.”

Other categories include:

- whining about unhistorical flight models
- whining about low model quality
- whining about damage model
- whining about modes in the game, claiming they are shitty
- whining about game balance (imbalanced planes) etc.

Platforms

The report suggests that WG trolls should focus on following platforms:

- official forum
- one of the main sources of info for RU players are Youtube channels, therefore the report proposes to focus on Gaijin’s official youtube channel (spamming negative comments) as well as fan videos.
- next, the report suggests targetting more famous War Thunder videomakers and their channels with negative comments
- finally, it’s social networks (VT VK channel, Steam and Reddit for English users), with Facebook being of secondary value

Conclusion

Again, according to my information, this report was executed and acted upon by WG community managers with the exception of various WG individuals, refusing to participate in this shit due to their personal integrity. And you know what? Even if I didn’t know what I know from WG ex-staff, I’d totally believe it – remember this idiot? Hmm, makes me wonder, how many haters in FTR comments are paid WG employees with sockpuppet accounts :) No worries, I do realize some people actually genuinely hate my ass, but I caught one already and where there’s one…

The question is, can this happen to other competing projects, such as Armored Warfare? Well… I am sure they will try. But AW staff knows about this, other people have leaked it before (never published though). I asked them for opinion – and the stance is, AW is ready.

And as for you, dear readers, think of this next time you see a hateful troll… :)

251 thoughts on “How Wargaming Sabotages Competition (War Thunder)

    • it would actually surprise me if it wasn’t a normal tactic of gaming companies nowdays, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Gaijin was doing the same to WG (remember the time right before WT:GF test?)

        • Gay people would like to have a word with you for your insult.

          And that group is much larger than you might think if you use the medieval definition of gaiety.

          If you reject gaiety, you can never be happy again. Think about it.

          • Notorious troll, else you could probably blame other players for teaching the kids to talk shit.

            Thanks to SS for posting this, figured it deserved a better place than the WT subreddit.

          • Actually, that’s not a medieval definition. That was the definition until the ’60s or ’70s and it’s pronounced GUY-jin anyway. :)

      • I was about to say I would not be surprised to see it mutually against eachother between WG and Gaijin… Doesn’t look like those companies have any respect for how they get results

      • Still a better love story than Twilight.

        Also, “It’s all true. Of course, I do not have a proof” *slow claps*
        -Not implying it ISN’T true, yet the negative tone of this article leaves me wondering if SS ever ponders as to why these tactics are used by WG and if any other company ever uses them?
        –Answer? Pretty much every big-name company these days. I’m really not surprised if any of this were to be true, companies have been known to do this to their competitors. A LOT of companies.

        Definitely agree with you, who says Gaijin ISN’T doing the same thing? And where’s that proof?

    • “Is this a normal tactic for gaming companies to deal with their competition?”

      It would not suprise me if yes.

      Videogames nowadays are business with lots of money in them , so its entirely possible, that big companys do EVERYTHING to get more money…

        • Rockstar? Have you played GTA:SA (the one that had two direct competitors in its time: True Crime series and DRIV3R)? There, on several occasions they directly mocked both of them (“TRUE GRIME” dump truck billboard with True Crime-like logo, one of Mad Dogg’s bodyguards playing videogame and complaining about its main character named Tanner).

          Similarly, DRIV3R mocked GTA: Vice city’s main character’s inability to swim by introducing collectable easter-egg pedesterian “Timmy Vermicelli”, which looked just like VC’s Tommy Vercetti, but with inflatable floating wings on arms.

          So i guess it’s totally normal and OK-ish for one videogame developer to lead negative, mocking campaign against its rival.

            • Saints fuckin’ Row…

              Because GTA-like game needs Gangsta US president, gates to hell and other bullshit… Those guys behind this thing must be really trippin’.

              And people still complain about GTA being unrealistic because player – one civillian- gets pursued by whole national guard with tanks, battle choppers and jet fighters…

          • These are actually pretty clever :D Too smart for WG’s level…paying trolls to attack a product in real life, and media platforms is a different matter.

          • It’s one thing to mock a competitor with easter eggs in your game, a whole other story to try to spread lies and disinformation on the competitor’s website/forum.

        • I see you to often on this site… are you WG Troll ? :D

          Let me tell you what really happends at WG:
          Question: How to make WOT and WOWp more succesfull ?
          Answer 1: Make new maps
          Answer 2: Introduce more tanks
          Answer 3: Make GOOD missions
          Answer 4: Troll the competition forums.
          What do you think they choosed ?

          This is why you have a 5 HD model every 3 months, because the 3D artists are talking trash on the forums, insted of making the models.

    • No. Maybe they take things to court or act like assholes with their copyright(King.com style) but not like this.

    • It’s absolutely, 100% normal. In the world of Global economics, competition is nothing short of war between major companies. You can bet your ass almost ever company that is actively competing with another company for a specific genre in any market will be doing their best to subvert the competition as much as possible.

    • No its not. I worked for several years in western world game development and while minor scratches happen from time to time, people know they need to be more polite. Main reason is that franchises change hands, studios change publishers, developers change of studios, and you will get dropped if you do this type of stuff. And people DO discover, always. There is always someone unhappy at any company and they will leak things like that.

      This is just a reflex of the company founders behavior and childish mentality.

      • Polite huh? Some companys have killed for profits before, don’t put your head in the sand…

      • Do I need to remind you of this little software company called Microsoft and their troll department? That Microsoft invented Vaporware? Nonexistent software that was published as soon to be release so they could tank a competitor’s sales.

        What WG did is just normal in any big company trying to defend their business. Small companies don’t do it just because they lack the money.

    • In fact, not only gaming companies, but almost ALL large enough IT related companies, with major competitors existing, include such paying trolls. In games, in gaming consoles, in cameras, in smart phones, etc. Just EVERYWHERE.

      Never forget to doubt every single review in the internet and think twice, or you will be easily trapped.

    • Maybe Silentstalker could enlighten us, if this is normal tactic used by other gaming companies?

    • I hope that you are not naive enough to think that WG would be the only one doing this?

      Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending WG but still they are not the only one’s to blame here. :P

    • It is common (I wouldnt never call it normal) practice on the internet in everything (games, computers, software, fridges, cars, services, hotels).

      Never trust any “product” opinions on the internet. Huge part of them are made by people who are paid for positive or negative spam.
      .

    • While this is quite a despicable tactic, I would hardly think it rare in the gaming industry for giants like this to not employ methods for crippling other competitions games like this.

    • frankly I am surprised WG, a large international company sitting upon hundreds of millions of USD, thinks they are justified in any way shape or form to drop to such a low level, to try and bash and slander an indie company (let alone any company, but kicking an underdog is particularly sick of them).

      • As much as this will give WG a bad rep, I believe other companies do this too. Gaming is a big industry, so greedy people do what ever it takes to get as much money as possible.
        I’m not defending WG, just stating possibly true facts. I do find it sad that companies do this kind of stuff, makes me sick.

    • A public smear campaign is probably as old as capitalism. Lets take a moment of silence for old Topsy the elephant. At least now its just words.

      It is naive to think that the most unsolicited fan boy or troll comments aren’t ‘guerilla marketing’.

    • Bad? I would say Sadistic!
      We are nerfing the TD’s Oh! btw it is a TD weekend Enjoy!

      (paid hate trolls systematically attack sites, forums, social network pages and fan pages.)
      This has been going on for years in a wide variety of interests.

    • AW can’t come quick enough!

      Time and time again, WG have shown that they are just a bunch of grubs. Their complete contempt for their player base shines through. It is almost like they think what idiots we are for spending money on their game. Attitudes like this come from the top. Hardly surprising when Serb considers the users a bunch of Krayfish and doesn’t hide his contempt for the playerbase at all.

      All Obsidian need to do is copy WOT but treat the playerbase with respect and most of the Western players will be happy to transition across.

      • I think it would be naieve to assume only WG would be doing this. So, to answer your question: I think this sort of behaviour is indeed mutual. Someone here noted it correctly “global business is warfare” and we all know that all is fair in Love and War.

        Doesn’t make it any less dirty, but I think it’s very fair to assume Gaijin is far from an angel and more then likely employs the same policies/tactics vs Wargamining.

        • probably, but i don’t think Gaijin has the resources(monetary, ammountof drones/cm/goons, etc) to actually fund this kind of shitsmearing campaigns to the massive level WG can do (and you do need resources in some form or other, someone has to actually perform deep “recon” of the other game, prepare the phrases, special screenshots, instructions, research, it takes an unholy ammount of time to do all that -and it’s quite a shit assignment- for the marketing dept)

        • well I doubt they do right now, they’re too small to afford such uselessly cruel endeavours, as a company the cruelty probably lies in their forum, where I have found you have to tread a careful line so as not to offend the mods, lest you feel their wrath.

        • It’d also be stupid to automatically assume that if WG is doing that than Gajin must be doing the same.

          Bordering with “I’m the Wargaming employee trying to whitewash my own company” level of stupid.

      • Some topics made on WoWp oficial forum would suggest it but these topics were usually so stupid I did not pay the attention.

  1. Wether it’s true or not, I’m fine with it, I play wot for the fun, sometimes buy gold and I don’t feel like this is that big a deal, it’s not like people suddenly stop playing War Thunder because of some hatefull guys, I personally just dislike war thunder because of the messed up matchmaking system, totally ruined the game for me (and many others too).
    Let’s just hope armored warfare won’t get this stuff against them and give some good competition for wargaming.

    • You know it’s not gon happen. Look at the comments of every AW video, it’s already there.

      • at one video i saw leopard 1 against cheiftain how is this a working MM?
        iknow there arent much people that is why there is no MM in game but that doesnt promise much

        • WG employee spotted

          >There is a good reason they are not adding this now!
          >That must mean it’s real shit!

          Go home and get better at this, man, your boss won’t be pleased when he sees how easy to spot you are.

        • @userext

          There is no MM in the pre-alpha focus tests that we have seen (or however they call it).

          Your turn WG employee…

          • Too early too say anything about armored warfare matchmaking but there is one thing that really bugs me, the damage. According to several videos I hvae seen you get more damage by hitting critical parts, can get crew skills for more damage on some parts and you get more damage when a specific class spots you, I really wouldn’t enjoy that.

            • Well it’s a feature of the game that’s different from WoT.
              Probably because “a tank is only as strong as its weak spot” which is obviously not true in most cases outside of WoT

        • There wasnt working mm obviously with only 500 players online with mostly tier 2 tanks. There couldnt be one. Only few people got tanks on tier 5 like your Chieftan.

        • How is a leopard 1 fighting a Chieftain a problem? They were both in service introduced nearly at the same time (Leo 1 in 1965 and Chieftain in 1966). Hell personally it wouldn’t be too shocking to me to see a Challenger 2 fighting a Leo 1 since the Leo 1 is still serving in some countries to this day. So I don’t see any problems here with how it is structured.

    • Overreacting is a thing, evrything will get blown up a little once you’re fired, still pretty bad they did this though.

      • “pretty bad”? “drama”? Both of you, need to get your shit together. It’s mudslinging in it’s purest form, bordering with defamation. Completely outrageous practice.

  2. I dont think that Gaijin isnt doing the same. Maybe not on this level, but hey its about money, and most companys do this on regular basis – nothing special at all. The only thing that makes me wonder is the scale – but hey, its WG after all :D

  3. This isn’t drama. This is pure shit. If I were Gaijin, I’d hire some Chechen’s and… You know the rest.

    “WG Minsk Office Under Siege by Chechen Terrorists; -put a number- Dead, -put a number- Wounded”

    Call me a terrorist, I won’t care, they deserve to be blown up into pieces.

  4. I wonder if WT have enough to go to court on?
    If they could get a court order for the release of internal WG communications….

  5. and war thunder puts people to chat in wot how great war thunder is? :))
    it’s a conspiracy :))

  6. Presumably all the big game houses have their community managers undertake this type of black propoganda, even dare we mention it Gaijin and AW? Even Activision Blizzard EA or all of them?

  7. WG – Vvarious G-spots . Well but if serious I did wonder why sometimes there was like milion negative comments about War thunder in different youtube videos . Now we know ….

  8. Russia/Belarus are developing a huge industry in spamming and trolling every single online resource. You can even find pro-Russia/anti-west comments in mundane places like gardening websites!

    Probably that makes it easy and obvious for WG to assemble a team to do the same for their products.

    • Given that there are tons of Russians on every single damn army video saying how their t64s can “destroy useless M1A2s” I ain’t surprised

    • Gardening xD I can imagine “Your stupid faggot western capitalist roses are SHIT compared to our glorious red motherland ones!”

    • isnt Gaijin russain too? dont worry gaijin is probably doing same to WG
      people that plays AW will be WG-G mix so…yeah

      also WoWs can be a break out for WG because there has never been (not that i seen) warship battles

    • We’ve already seen tons of it
      “this is just a ripoff of WoT”
      “arty works just the same”
      “graphics sucks, WoT is better”
      “low detail model and ugly tanks, will not play”
      Note that the details of every tank in AW is better than the HD tanks in WoT, btw

      • Well, it is directly inspired by WoT and they never tried to hide the fact.
        Arty works at the moment exactly the same, they did not try to hide the fact, but said they were thinking about ways to change that.
        As for graphics, at least for me, they look mighty fine. And I do not particularly care for the graphics, I play WoT with un-enhanced grahics and I find it sufficient. I simply hope AW is better optimized than WoT.

      • This is just a ripoff of WoT, at least 80 percent.

        New types of shells look interesting, let’s see. In any case, arty sucks=)

        Graphics looks good.

        • Arguably – it’s WoT done right. Game uses proper modern engine, got interesting lineup of vehicles, graphics good 5 years ahead of WoT, devs seem to actually listen to the community and implement changes community wants, and so far trying it I had more fun than in WoT. That said though – AW still got a long way to go, so it’s yet to be judged.

    • To be fair, you generally find a whole less “WT fanboys” than “WT haters”. Not saying that they aren’t doing it of course.

      • I, for one, am not a WT hater, but I tried it with high expectations… and came back highly disappointed.
        And to be fair, I somethimes have the feeling there is something f*cked up with MM and missions. I have an arty mission where I am supposed to destroy a TD, and the teams I fight against tend to have a marginal number of TDs… I find it a bit weird, but my sample may be biased.

        • My WT experience has, too, been reduced to trying new premiums and not touching multiplayer because WTFYSICS+Asian ping = too much win for me to handle

        • Planes for better (though it’s arguable, playerbase is divided about some changes – I don’t play their planes, though, so wouldn’t know much).
          Tanks… just no. Not for me at all.

          • Tanks are buggy as hell, I honestly hope the new physichs won’t be as terrible as the current one in WTGF, and while the planes are fun to play, it often gets screwed up due to matchmaking, getting raped by jets in my stuka :/

            • From what I seen so far – majority of people saying that “tanks are buggy” in War Thunder never even learned anything about them an expect some random stupid stuff happening, or complain about everyone one-shotting them while they themselves are too stupid to learn where to shoot to achieve results.

  9. Heh, that’s some pretty negative stuff right there.

    Not like I think nobody does it (I think WT does it as well and many others too), but having a written documents and such stuff for that… that’s just a bit too much, WG.

  10. I am not surprised with this. If you take in consideration what kind of relationship Serb and rest of WG bastards are having towards their own playerbase then this is normal thing to do toward competition which has better product then WG has (World of Warplanes).

    Anyhow WG is more occupied with introducing bling and candy things in game instead of listening their playerbase and plan their development accordingly. Some well known bugs are present in game for a long time and still they do nothing about them.

    So for that reason of neglecting playerbase, acting like shits toward that same playerbase that pays for premium time and premium tanks and not fixing bugs I decided not to give a cent to WG…I would rather spend 30 euros on Homeworld remastered, game that was out 1999 and looks and runs better that this halproduct of Wargaming.

    I am not paying my money so someone can fu.k me right up to my brain, if I am paying I wanna be the one that is fuc.ing..

  11. This is not surprising as negative astroturfing is standard Russian tactics since forever. They take their Maskirovka serious.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maskirovka

    Ever read Reuters comment section about Ukraine? Hilariously filled with paid russian commenters posing as “ordinary citizen of world”.

    Given FTR’s circulation size it would not surprise me at all if there are paid “concerned world players” posting frequently here. Just look at some of the people trying to steer the conversation into WT vs WoT instead of discussing the foul underhanded tactics of WG.

    Suspicious would you not say? Hehehe.

  12. So this is what WG employers do. No wonder they never get anything done, they are too busy trying to shit on other games to improve their own :D

  13. This is exactly what is happening on the wot forums right now, wonder if someone reversed the order so these examples are from Gajin vs Wot…

      • I don’t think AW and WT have anything between them. I mean they’re both tanks, but it’s like comparing Eve and KSP: only thing they have in common are spaceships

        • Armored warfare is even more arcade then WOT while WT is trying hard to not be WOT, which is were they failed horribly with their tanks

          • “Armored warfare is even more arcade then WOT” – buahahaha, how the heck did you come up with that BS?

  14. Dude that link to the idiot WG EU community manager thing was really funny.

    Also, anyone wonder if part of the mega trolling that killed RAMJB’s War Thunder videos could have come from this? I don’t know, he might have bailed before then, but man alive… I’ve never seen someone hit so hard by so many trolls.

  15. so basically normal corporation behavior?……. SHOCKING!…… its like they copied everything from their own forum…… i mean guys with 100 battles shitting on the game all the time….. you think they are normal players?! nope

  16. And who’s to say that AW guys don’t do the same? Look how many people are already trash talking WoT without having even played AW once? How many “AW WILL END WOT” posts have you seen?
    Welcome to the business world bro

    • “AW WILL END WOT posts”: around 10, and counting, since the first Jangles AW video.
      “AW IS SHIT WOT IS BETTER posts”: too many

  17. If WG would try to troll or bash FTR with such fake accounts and negative comments, then they would dig a grave for themselves.
    Because most probably SS is responsible for bringing shitloads of new players and keeping even more old players to WOT.

  18. It’s called Competition and other companies, whether in the food or game industry, will practice this kind of tactic, not necessarily on Social Media, but through other means of “Dirty Play” which mostly happens behind closed doors.

    • Well now that someone told us what’s happening behind those gates we can have some good popcorn.

  19. Pingback: [Sammelthread] War Thunder - Seite 118

  20. We all like to talk shit about WG , they are slow lazy and whatnot ha ha , funny who cares…. But this is just malicious. If WG were popular in the more traditional gaming scene this would be a scandal. Not to mention they have affected social sites, youtubers and many other third parties…

    You would expect this shit from asshole mobile devs, but this is ridiculous…SerB mafia confirmed. Fucking pricks.

    I didn’t expect any moral standards from WG and I enjoyed WoT for years..but it makes me feel bad I gave money to scum like them.

    Turns out I was buying soap from Hitler. (to use as an extreme example)

    • welcome to the real world i guess?! :D….. did you just woke up from a dream or you are just really young?…… this is everywhere, im not surprised at all…. btw, they are doing this to WG too so whats the deal?

      • The fact that it’s everywhere does not justify it…plus it’s about WG specifically, this kind of shit makes them lose even the little credibility they had. Its one thing to view them as incompetent..completely another to see them as aggressors.

        Plus, this sort of thing is not that common in the video game industry. Mobile certainly, but mainly there.

        • not common?…… really?……. go look to WG forums first, guys with 100 battles bitching up and down……. go look to any MMO game forum….. good example might be Day Z, now that it has competitor

          • Well, that’s the problem isn’t it. You can’t know who is a paid troll and who is not. Most are really not, the expenses would be too much.

  21. So you are paid by Gaijin ? :D Sorry, but this is so funny. But if someone from big companies read this i will hate anything you want for good salary :D

  22. Holy shit…
    I mean…wow…

    Another reason, amongst personal experience, to distrust Russians and their extremely shady practises.
    Label me a bigot if you want, every time I have to deal with Russians, they’re obnoxious, egotistical bastards with absolutely no shame and ethics.

    PS: Don’t start with “WG is from Belarus, so they are not Russian!”. That’s bullshit and you know it

  23. This is really fairly typical. I work fairly regularly with major (in their niche) IT harware/software companies writing and editing marketing materials, primarily what they call ‘competitive’ marketing materials – resources for the company’s marketing and sales people to use to help discredit competitors they view as a threat. For the most part, this involves looking at the features/buzzwords/marketing materials of the competitor, and then coming up with clever largely unverifiable or semantic arguments (twisting positives into negatives because of some edge case) to help the salespeople sell our product over theirs, or at least to make theirs look less appealing. A few of the groups I have worked with have had people looking for blogs/articles/etc referring to the opponent’s products so they can comment about how shit it is.

    This is by way of saying that this sounds like entirely typical corporate behavior and not some sort of corrupt/heavy-handed ex-soviet way of doing business. It would be more surprising to me if a company as large as wargaming did not engage in this sort of behavior.

    • There’s a difference between taking the competing brands’ ads and twisting them, trying to sell your own stuff, and hiring people to go shit on everything on the internet.

      It’s the difference between a salesman making fun of another brand to sell his own product, and hiring thugs to break kneecaps.

      • that is rather stupid comparison to few online comments….. they are doing it to WG too……. dont be blind

        • A few?
          There could be thousands.
          And that’s *just* for the part we know now.

          I’m almost certain they’re also doing it in-game, making the game worse for other players and talking about how WoT is better and they’re going back to it.

          • ” hiring thugs to break kneecaps”….. eh, online?…. you can be annoyed a bit but “thugs”? :D…. trolls are thugs now apparently…

    • you know what is the ONLY problem people have with WG?……. they cannot label it as fancy as western companies…… it goes something like this “personal finance assistant – a guy who lures people in debt to reassing money to them”, “personal health advisor – guy who sells german “health” products”, “product advancement department – corporate espionage dep”……… there you go

      • This.

        Apart from massive fuck-ups on balancing, WT planes are fantastic.
        I don’t like the way they keeping adding half-assed planes with barely functional flight models and fixing them later, but on the whole, it’s a good experience.

        WT tank?
        Jesus…what a mess.

  24. Not Surprised, or offended by this being leaked. I know that when it comes to big economic powerhouses anything goes. Money is money, and if playing dirty gets you more, odds are people do it. How the world works sadly.
    WoWp sucks, hopefully they fund more money into WoWs so it doesn’t fall victim to outer competition. WoT is still the main dog out there, even AW will need time to catch up regardless of how different/better it is.

  25. It doesn’t really surprise me. It’s the Russian method after all. They have people whose sole job is to post pro-Putin comments on the internet.

  26. I don’t see why you find this so odd?
    In some places throughout Europe this is illegal, but generally speaking this type of thing is done all over the world. In fact, in some places where it is illegal it still happens and the people behind it just deal with the penalty that it earns them if they are ever caught.

    If your shocked by this then take it as a learning experience… This is how the world runs.

    On top of that, The more you move into RU is the more you find where business is controlled by strong-arm techniques that are obviously wrong. I have read stories of owners having their family kidnapped and release only happens when the business is transferred over. So a bit of this doesn’t really strike me as odd.

    The worst I have seen is where one company will hire a 3rd party to make thousands of bogus accounts and flood the support systems to such a point that the company literally cant cope. WG is lucky in that regard, their support is so shit to start with that no one could make it worse.

    • AMEN….. in west it is illegal but it happens……. you ask why there are no such cases?… well because you would go to jail…. this dude have no such fear so he backstabbed his former company

  27. Thank you for writing this article. Posted same info on WT reddit few hours ago but i don’t have the writing skills to make it this good. Honestly I wasn’t even surprised when i heard about this but the level at which it was done just scares me.

  28. It may not be unique to WG but it is certainly unethical.

    Who cares if it is standard business practice in Russia, WG are catering to a world market.

    What is remarkable is that instead of putting their energy into improving the products that they are marketing and the related communities WG is wasting it trying to trash a competitors product and communities.

    I for one am going to exercise my right to choose by not supporting WG financially in the future.

    I don’t think WG needs a competitor to trash their games, things like this will do it for them.

  29. So Silentstalker, considering how you bash WG and WoT in every second sentence of your blog (“Bugworld”, WG EU fails, “Hey guys, you won’t get punished if you cheat in WoT”), how do we know you’re not a paid hater as well?

  30. Oh, please. This is *kid’s stuff* compared to the shit AMD and NVidia sling at each other. Here, you have the intersection of astroturfing being quite common in the consumer tech fields and the “maskirovka” that the Russians are so rightly famous for.

    In all honesty, WG isn’t too bad at it. Samsung is particularly inept at this sort of thing and always come off looking very silly.

  31. Aha… WG have another topic to discuss on their international meeting xD
    If its all ture and only they know if it is… They should be really ashamed… Lol I mean this is a standard method in this world nowadays but let this information to be seen by your customers xD Lol… They really look bad as a company.. But I guess their answer would be like those in Q and A articles..
    Q: What do you say about your name getting worse in front of people ?
    A: Oh how terrible/ Shit happends and so on… I think they really do not care about this.. I mean sure it is not very good advertisement but still as long as they will have their bambilion dolars each month they really do not care about this kind of problems… Still you have to see them as a few PC nerds/ boys living their dream.. All they ever wanted was to get rich.. And they did… Now its just the question how long they can milk people to get even more money… So at this point xD Good Job Wargaming.net .. You have done well :P

    PS: I really do not care either… I just want this games WoT,WoWP, and upcomming WoWS keep going so I can relax myself a few times a week in this kind of games… Among with others good things :) Barbecue and cold beer.. :P

    So if this will see anyone from WG puppets than .. Be proud and do what you do.. Just keep your games going , make them better and enjoy life … xD

    Oh and one more thing … Fuc** you WG EU.. I could not resist… xD

  32. How funny, that you can use those arguments against WG itself, and it won’t be even lying at all :D

  33. If Gaijin wants some revenge, here’s what they can do: Put a few thousand bots playing arty in world of tanks and there you have it, massive give up from wot players.

  34. We’ve already seen some pretty nasty things said about AW on the forum oddly by people who really liked WoT

  35. The thing about this was that I was surprised by the detail of their strategy. I had always assumed that this had been more of a general statement to employees to go and bad mouth ‘X’ and get your friends and family do the same.

  36. Using TROLL ATTACKS on an MMORPG? ….
    Does WG bring their own SAND to the BEACH?

    How about – and thats a CRAZY one: just make ur game “better”.
    You dont have to pay “haters” – just look WOT chatt and how often you see “but in warthunder……” or “but in AW…..”

    you dont see that to often in WT for that matter (Aw idk yet).

    or are those payed from Gaijin!? *don don donnnnn* nah, do it my self xD
    (so im a spy, ofc < double agent! and 3x… since SS payed me to post this…)

    • AW gets directly compared to WoT. And since most of AW folks know what the fuck is wrong in WoT – all they say is “dont fuck up this like in WoT”.
      In WT chatting is non-existent – because, oh lord, you are fighting your own tank to drive around.

      • That’s the advantage that AW gets over WoT. They just have to avoid WoT fuck ups. At the same time it is their weakness, because they will always be a WoT clone.
        AW needs to come with their own fuck ups to get ahead of WoT.

      • Then learn to drive noob, lol. I play all 3 games and don’t have any problems with driving in WT. Yes, it’s more realistic, so requires bit of time getting used to, but saying shit like that is only a testimony to your own incompetence.

        As for AW – they started with a great engine. That’s a huge leap ahead of Wargaming since the very beginning. If they won’t screw it up and keep on listening to the community – it might replace WoT easily for those players who like arcade shooters with tanks over anything else.

  37. This is quite pathetic and disgusting. To be honest, WG should consider AW a bigger competitor than WT, WT dominates the plane sector, and it’s a more realistic game style, with longer matches.

  38. In my country there is a certain political party from the right of the political spectrum that uses exactly the same tactics in internet mass media and it is utterly despicable.
    But reading these and other forums i have to say i am not certain that the opposition of wg does not employ the same dirty strategy. I am constantly reading that war thunder or armored warfare will be the killer of wot and how much better they all are even though AW for instance is yet to be released.
    Capitalist world is a dirty place indeed.

    • You live in a fantasy world if you believe for a second that neither Gaijin not Mail.Ru are not engaging in a trolling campaign against WG.

  39. Not surprised.

    I haven’t paid anything (except receiving free golds, tanks and gifts from friends) anyway, so I don’t care what they are doing in the background as long as it could keep my interest.

    I also won’t be surprised if WT/AW also doing the same. Just look at the numbers of people shitposting here for months or years. If I am THAT annoyed by a game I would simply leave rather than staying in a development/leak blog.

    Since we’re talking about this, probably FTR could finally implement some kind of login mechanism using WG ID. Would be much easier to spot botter and stupid trashtalker since this comment section is already much toxic nowadays.

  40. SS:

    First of all I do not hate you (yet), I love FTR for all the information I get on the game here but lately the blog resembles a WG hate site rather than a “fan”/game news blog. Yesterday you went a step further trolling some girl streamer with big boobs. Yeah shes a stupid btch trying to make the most out of her body but hey most of the girls on twitch do that, thats not a new thing. You however going that low (making a post about it and basically trolling her)…well dunno it was a very sad thing to see and very disappointing.

    Now back to WG. Do you think that only WG does thing like this? Nearly every comany and government does this, it’s called smear campaign. Is it morally acceptable? Nope. Just like all those lies on the tv when you see an advertisement that tells you it will change your life when in fact it will only make your wallet bleed. This is how the world work nowadays sadly but we have to get over it. Companies fight each other at every level and with every “weapon” they can think of. That is their battle not ours. Oh and btw how can you tell if Gaijin did not do something to provoke WG or even fight back with the same tactics?

    Anyways, is this tactic reprehensible? Yes it is but look at all those things WG does for it’s community, because to me that is what is important. All the events, the free stuff we get and whatnot. Yeah they also want to earn money and usually they wan’t to “force” us into spending money but hey they are a company and companies wan’t to make money..and the most important thing to note here is that we actually get a shitload of stuff in return. Never have I seen a free to play game that grows so fast and gives so much, WG actually makes improvements to the game aswell unlike other big companies. I mean look at the fuckin League Of Legends, it nearly looks the same as in beta and those guys are filthy rich. Oh yes they cannot upgrade the graphics too much because they want low spec pcs to run it properly, now that is what I call bullshit…

    Anyways I hope that you will stop heading into this direction with your blog. Oh and one more thing, what you are doing right now, this hate crusade against WG, is it any different than what you just told us about WG? Who is this helping really? Oh wait I got a conspiracy theory too, do you get paid for this by someone? Just saying mate…you should really stop with this crap. Aaaaaand im not payed for this entry by WG, wish I would be, I would ask for a Type 59 code haha. ;)

  41. pmsl.. I think the WT player called Panzer_Chewbacca or something comes under the heading.. “Gaijin is lying, they are constantly nerfing planes”

    He repeats that constantly in Gen Chat until he gets a ban… and usually in full CAPS as well…

  42. Stalker, if you went this “binge” – here’s more stuff about “wg”. This site is dedicated to companies and reviews about them. Specifically “wg” there sooooo cool stuff))
    Special attention to 1) the negative reviews and (2) comments.
    There is the same primitive trolling from wg, departures from the response, twinkie from wg, who write “good” reviews and all other dirt, typical wg))
    Сайт на русском языке, но думаю, ты разберёшься (если тебя это заинтересует) ;-)
    http://companies.dev.by/wargaming-geym-strim/reviews

  43. “Motives do not make the truth any different”. “It is all true”. “I have no proof”.
    Top work Mr Tabloid.

  44. Dear SS,

    What you just reported is what Apple and Samsung do to each other every day, as well as many other big companies while competing for the same market.

    This type of behaviour can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome or even further back. Smearing the competition is a very old trick. Before the internet age it was done in newspapers, TV, radio, etc.

    This is why the model F2P + game store will remain. If a game is free to play, even smearing campaigns cant force people not to test the game. On the other hand, if the game is P2P, smearing campaigns can have an huge impact because a lot of people will be afraid of spending money to try a game that has many negative comments.

    Having said that, I think WG smearing campaign against WT is lame and unfortunately reveals WG fear for not producing good quality games. Basically, WG does not trust their own products and feel threatened by the competition.

    This smear campaign highlights WG weaknesses:

    1.WoT has a crap MM that prevents new players of enjoying the game, reducing significantly the influx of new players as can be already noticed in US;

    2.WoWP is a bad game with an awful game engine similar to the 90´s;

    3.WoWS is still a long way of being released and the player base will not be as big as WoT or even WoWP (it is an old men´s game, will not appeal too much to young people);

    4.WG russian based culture easily accepts unbalances and bias towards some tech trees because Russia was never a fair and balanced country. Unfairness is an ever present part of life for russian people but it is not easily accepted by western countries (US and EU). This type of attitude is eroding steadily the WoT player base in both markets. Even in Asia, China specially, WoT is different from the version we play here. Every game needs to be adapted to the market and WG failed miserably in EU and US (specially US where they have a marginal player base considering the 350 million population);

    5.WG EU staff is so incompetent that even Minsk realized it;

    6.WGL is badly designed and boring as hell, with incompetent commentators and the same few ridiculous maps, even if WG tries to forcefully shove it down our throats;

    7.Viktor Kisliy lost control of the big monster he so successfully created. I have met him and I can tell you that is a brilliant guy. But the corporate layers under him are, in the most part, incompetent or biased and are slowly killing the golden eggs chicken.

    Thank you for revealing all these fatcs to us. That is why we read FTR every day..:)

    Best regards,

    Red

  45. I wonder if obsidian entertainment has friends in Anonymous, that might be why they said they are ready. (If so, WG is going to die)

  46. Apparently in Russian business all is fair. Gaijin does the same thing. At least WG has not taken it to the floor of the russian parliament. Gaijin was steeling wowp airplane screen shots, so WG added a really ugly decal to all their planes to stop it.

    • That’s hardly limited to Russian business though. And that’s not limited to business either. The only people who have to play more or less fair are the ones with not enough power, who have to rely on the law to protect them.

    • “Gaijin does the same thing” – Jumping into stupid conclusions like yours sounds more like yet another attempt of whitewashing Wargaming by it’s employees.

  47. Ask them how they manipulate the MM in order to make IM harder to get.
    I mean 100 battles in Light Tanks and i got 1 malinovka 1 prohorovka and like 70 city maps. Also – kill 2 mediums – no medium tanks on the nemy team. Kill arty – no arty in the enemy team. ASK them, as we have to collect major replay database and the concussions will not be very good!!!!

  48. Yeah, that sounds like something up the alley of WG. What is really funny is the reason why WG does all this crap – obviously they are afraid of WT, that they steal their clients. Guess the next logical step for WG is to bash AW when it is released, since that will be an even greater threat.

  49. Not surprised. It’s in their interest to stir up shit.

    But welp, WT is still a buggy mess.

  50. Shameful behaviour, but all too typical and I’m quite sure the traffic in this street goes both ways. At the end of the day play what you enjoy and ignore the Trolls.

  51. OMG I have been giving my money to such dicks!
    Btw patch 9.6, which gave us a LOT of content, already had a bad effect on my favourite tank, so if the new physics make it sluggish in addition, I will never play WoT again.
    “Don’t like World of Tanks? – Don’t play World of Tanks!” (serb style)

  52. So long as they focus their overall effort of improving the game, that’s all I can ask for.

    It’s sad they need to do this in order to further their own product but what you gonna do :/

  53. AW is coming from Obsidian and if anyone knows how to deal with negative feedback, its Obsidian. They have a charming history of releasing some of the most buggy yet most fascinating games of all times. They will chew up Wargaming, spit them out and move on as if nothing happend. (no, not ment as WoT killer, just PR)

    • Yea, but at the same time it’s a my.com game… more of that Russian “elite”. ~_~

  54. Pingback: Do Wargaming sabotages other games?

  55. Why are some of the WG employee so incompetent?

    Seriously, WoT is like one of the leaders in the MMO F2P RTS genre. Even though they are the top dogs, yet they still consistently manage to hire incompetence.

    At the current level Wargaming are at, they should be hiring professional un-biased employees who do what they do because they are passionate about gaming/tanks. They should not be using underhanded tactics at all.

    I guess armoured warfare and warthunder will DP wargaming and leave it sore.

  56. Way to go WG! PROTECT your interests. All these brats whining about how unfair it is. LMAO! Children, go back to your video games while the Big Boyz play in the streets.

  57. Its funny, you try to imply that AW will have less hate in both ways. As a WoT player, I tried foruming there, and everyone is hostile to us.

    I would try the WT community, but not everyone has a smartphone to confirms account creation. :/

  58. Why are people so shocked? Russia is simply catching up with the 24th century.

    Business is business, as so eloquently codified in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine “Ferengi Rules of Acquisition”.

    9. Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.
    10. Greed is eternal.
    62. The riskier the road, the greater the profit.
    106. There is no honour in poverty.
    168. Whisper your way to success.
    181. Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.
    189. Let others keep their reputation. You keep their money.
    211. Employees are rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them.
    239. Never be afraid to mislabel a product.
    261. A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.
    266. When in doubt, lie.

    I think collectively these cover the story nicely.

  59. WG and Gaijin: stronk maskirovka.

    When Obsidian (America) wants wage war, they do it with the Stars and Stripes prominently on their lapels.

  60. This is disgusting.
    I mean, the console VS console VS PC shit is bad, Call of Duty vs Battlefield is bad, ETC.. But it’s just dishonorable to pay people to talk shit and intentionally disrupt another gaming community.
    What’s wrong with the fucking planet we live on? Everybody is human. Motherfuckers need to get along.

  61. There is some things to say about WT tho:

    Gameplay is pretty horrible (there’s no sense of balance at any level – there is just a couple of planes/tanks that rape on each tier and the rest can go suck balls, same can be said about their maps there is no thinking about any balance whatsoever, rng is very unrealistic and poorly implemented).

    Community is even more braindead than in wot (wot sucks, then you see they are tomato/orange/potato level players in both games). Game being unbalanced means it’s just a massive derpfest – nobody cares about objectives since you get same reward for winning or loosing, RP gain is also very much imbalanced (since no thought was given about equalising or norming income to plane performance, some maps just downright suck for some classes – like attackers or bombers), arcade are just full of nose pointers, professional turners and clickers.

    P2W factor is much higher: Premium planes increase RP and credit gain massively (and you can unlock any planes of each nation with that), same about premium account (it’s 200% not 150% as wot), grind system is also pretty bad (after changing from nation based to individual plane based requirements increased massively it’s like factor of X grind increase) And also let’s say you have some plane unlocked and purchased, then they decide to add 3 planes in between, NO you can’t just buy plane you previously unlocked you need to GRIND and BUY all planes before it (enjoy the shitty uncompetitive modules as well which you can buy with gold directly). Same can be said about crew experience (you can buy max crew with gold only). There is also a function to upgrade crew qualification which is a massive bonus to some of most useful crew skills (first one is with credits, second one is available only with gold, and it’s also very expensive for top level planes).

    Whichever idiot decided that WOWP will be exact copy pasta of world of tanks (in grindfest, game engine/physics) is responsible for it’s fail, seriously you might just as well make “space invaders 3D” maybe same form of copy pasta will work for ships (since they are also land based objects and there’s not much need to get aerodynamics/physics right), I kind of doubt wows will be on par with wot, using exact same copy pasta format, so developers will need to be more innovative and put in some game specific features, to move game anywhere near success of wot.

      • Better luck with assumptions next time WT tomato. And tell your lazy programming overlords to step up their game in creating quality games without going only “milking way”.

  62. I suggest Obsidian should hire some very good network sec guys, cause WG maffia russian will hire lots of hackers to DDOS their servers constantly, WG is a criminal company that should be persecuted by international laws, remember their dealings with greece and not publishing their financials and such, i fear that WG is some front to the russian mob or worse….

  63. I love Armored Warfare for what is hopefully an effect on the META.

    I used to work in an IT shop where we sold only intel CPU’s and boards. It followed that everyone there were complete intel fanboys.

    Except me. I had to explain to them, over and over that if it weren’t for AMD, their lovely intel chips would cost twice as much. AMD was the best thing possible to exist in the marketplace because – love them or hate them – they kept intel prices down and also helped push the arms-race of advancements.

    I’m awesome like that. :D

    WT ground forces arcade mode isn’t as good as WoT, and the Sim mode is different enough to exist in its own space.

    AW is the best thing that can happen for WoT. It blatantly tries to copy everything that works about WoT, and also offer improvements. This forces Wargaming to have to look at themselves and re-assess priorities.

    This damn physics model has been in the pipe a long time, but I don’t think they would have starting hustling on it if not for AW. I imagine they had a meeting and said, “Havok” isn’t gelling, so what can we push out the door now Now NOW?”

    I want WoT to improve. I have over 22k games and 12 premium tanks. I like much about how it works so far, but like to wave AW at Wargaming as a warning so they will hopefully STOP FUCKING UP ARTILLERY.

    I just wish Wargaming had coders who knew more about real physics. I wish Wargaming designers better understood the effects of they’re actions before they fuck everything up.

    But now it all doesn’t really matter. Wargaming have turned out to be propaganda trolls. People like that never read advice without thinking it’s just more propaganda.