War Thunder's latest ban wave takes out 3,984 accounts, plus a space event exploit

Gaijin Entertainment has published its latest War Thunder Fair Play report, the recurring post in which the studio puts numbers to its anti-cheat work. This one covers the period since the previous update and it is heavier than usual, because one of the game's own bugs ended up driving a second, separate wave of punishments.

What the numbers say

The headline figure is 3,984 accounts banned for breaking paragraph 3.2.3 of the game's EULA, which covers the automation of gameplay - bots - and the use of cheat software. Those are the standard targets of every Fair Play round.

Separately, 661 temporary bans went out to players who deliberately exploited a bug that let them rack up excessive mission score in Air Simulator Battles during the Space Program Event. Gaijin files that under the same EULA paragraph, which is a notable call: it treats farming a broken scoring system as cheating rather than as a bug the studio simply needs to patch.

A third group covers behaviour rather than software. Gaijin says 397 accounts were banned for a week or longer for intentional teamkilling and griefing, and 13 of those were made permanent.

Named and listed

As it has done before, Gaijin says it will publish the full list of permanently banned players "for complete transparency", and that the list stays up for two weeks after the post. The rest of the announcement is account-security housekeeping: the studio recommends a strong password and two-step authentication, which War Thunder supports through email, SMS and TOTP apps including Gaijin Pass and Google Authenticator, and suggests enabling 2FA on the linked email address too.

Why it matters

War Thunder is still one of Steam's twenty most-played games more than a decade in, and simulator battles are where its most invested players live. A ban wave that reaches people who were exploiting an event rather than running cheat software is a signal about where Gaijin draws the line.