[15][16] Initially, Gaijin claimed after the game was announced that it was an April Fools joke before confirming its existence in June that same year.

[28] Players can control aircraft, ground vehicles, and warships from ten nations with a set of technology trees attached to them: United States, Germany, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, Italy, China, Sweden and Israel.

The game also incorporates other nations, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bangladesh, Belarus,[29] Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India, Iran, Ireland, Jordan, Kazakhstan,[29] Kuwait, Lithuania, the Netherlands, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Syria, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Vietnam (both North and South) and Saudi Arabia.

[58] [59] High Caliber Mayhem has denied any links to the separatist armed forces and published an explanation claiming that all the money from all advertisements on that channel were spent on humanitarian aid for civilians.

"[60] Following an in-game economic change in May 2023, a large amount of War Thunder players began revolting against the developers by review bombing the game on multiple platforms, such as Steam and Google.

[67][68][69] In 2021, a video of Republic of Korea's 3rd Armored Brigade using War Thunder for the Command & Control training session was made public.

[70] In January 2024, a Ukrainian M2 Bradley IFV gunner of the 47th Brigade, referred to only as Serhiy, took down a heavily armored Russian T-90M tank by hitting the weak spots and claimed that videogames taught him where to shoot exactly.

On several occasions, users on the War Thunder forum have shared restricted and/or classified documents during discussions about the accuracy of the vehicles depicted.

Anton Yudintsev, founder of Gaijin Entertainment, has stated that the development team is never exposed to the contents, reminding users that "it's both illegal and pointless, so they should never do that".

[77] In January 2023, Raytheon denied media reports that security clearance background checks for jobs at the defense contractor investigate whether applicants play War Thunder.

GameSpot praised it for its variety of airplanes and visuals,[99] whereas IGN criticized the user interface for being "overly abundant and cumbersome" in contrast to the "sparse in-battle HUD".