Game developer asks fans to stop making military propaganda videos
Video games are obsessed with the military and sometimes that backfires in predictable ways. This time, people are doctoring footage from combat simulator Arma 3 and making it look like war footage from Ukraine.
Developer Bohemia Interactive has urged content creators to "use their game footage responsibly", avoid clickbait titles, and make it clear that the footage is from a video game.
The footage is usually taken from a scene in the game and doctored so it's grainy or blurry, making it harder to distinguish it from a video game or real footage recorded with a low-quality camera.
"While it's flattering that Arma 3 simulates modern war conflicts in such a realistic way, we are certainly not pleased that it can be mistaken for real-life combat footage and used as war propaganda," Bohemia's PR boss Pavel Křižka said, via Eurogamer.
"We've been trying to fight against such content by flagging these videos to platform providers (FB, YT, TW, IG etc.), but it's very ineffective. With every video taken down, 10 more are uploaded each day. We found the best way to tackle this is to actively cooperate with leading media outlets and fact-checkers (such as AFP, Reuters, and others), who have better reach and the capacity to fight the spreading of fake news footage effectively."
It isn't the first time this has happened. Even mainstream news segments have mistaken Arma footage for the real thing in the past, but the fakes have ramped up since Russia invaded Ukraine.
