Gaijin Entertainment's War Thunder is usually in the news for one repeated reason: The people who play this military simulator take it incredibly seriously, and have a habit of leaking classified information onto the game's forums in an effort to win Internet arguments. But when they're not targeting each other, the favourite target of the playerbase is developer Gaijin and in various ways the game's extreme F2P grind: And they have a new focal point.
War Thunder introduced a new auction system on February 3 that, at the moment, allows players to bid on vehicle cosmetics with Gaijin Coin, an in-game currency bought with real-world money. The sense of putting limited time windows on premium currency sales, and the obvious FOMO of mixing that with time-limited items, is where the problems begin.
The feature is currently in beta and is intended for players to be able to sell each other their own cosmetics, though gaijin retains an element of control over what's selected. But the players don't think things are going to end there, and the negative reactions to the auction house centre on a single suspicion: Gaijin is going to use this to sell actual vehicles, the game's holy grail.
To be clear, Gaijin has neither done this nor indicated any plans to do so. But the players are convinced, and the most devoted are in uproar across the game's forums, subreddit and social media, as well as executing something of a small-scale review bombing campaign. The downward spike on Steam reviews consists of the same complaint: "The newly implemented auction system is predatory and one of the most greedy decisions Gaijin has ever made," says Galaxian, who has 2,700 hours in War Thunder.
"On the 3rd February, 2025, in the newest newsletter Gaijin introduced an auction system where players can bid Gaijin Coin on virtually limited tank and jet skins," says Erinkaze. "It sets a horrible precedent where in the future they could start selling Rare, removed from the game or OP vehicles for exorbitant prices (as if 70$ jets weren't expensive enough). If this system isn't criticized by the community at large, the rare vehicle scenario might actually happen knowing how greedy Gaijin is."
It's unclear just why players are so distrustful of Gaijin's motivations. The auctions are at the moment limited to player-created content, and allow the community at large to bid Gaijin Coin, the premium currency, to try and win a given item (the launch set are cosmetics related to the Lunar New Year). The player with the largest bid by the time the auction closes wins, and the system also allows for auctioning multiple items, with all players who make the highest bids receiving the items.
"Give it a year and they'll have exclusive vehicles in it," says AscendMoros on the game's subreddit." This company has proven they will go as far as they can. So they'll start with skins, then a premium vehicle here and there that you can buy in game for GE or someshit. Then a unique vehicle will roll up. This shit needs to stop here. Cause if it doesn't it won't ever stop."
There are countless other comments on similar lines, and the announcement post on the game's official forum is now at 754 replies and counting. Gaijin has responded to the unrest with this statement:
"We released the Auction with the intention of making it an experimental feature, aimed to support community content creators. The items that will be offered for sale will be made by content creators and the authors of these items will get a percentage from the total sales as a reward.
"We may add other cosmetic items besides the ones currently available during the Auction testing period. The purpose of the Auction is to provide an opportunity to purchase cosmetic items of interest without having to rely on luck, as well as to give authors the opportunity to receive a reward that corresponds to the demand for the items they create."
That line about maybe adding other cosmetic items, even though it's obvious, means this is continuing to run for the moment. The War Thunderers are convinced that this system which, right now, is entirely community focused is going to be the Trojan horse for the kind of excessive monetisation seen in something like World of Tanks. I'm not sure what if anything Gaijin can do to reassure them otherwise and the flipside, of course, is that the players may well turn out to be right.
