Why does this not happen for DCS or any of the much more serious simulators?
The real reason this is always happening for Warthunder is because it's being sensationalized by the media and what's happening is being massively misrepresented.
Every time one of these articles comes out for like the last 6 months at least the "leaked classified documents" have already been available online for _years_. But someone posts these easily findable documents on the Warthunder forums and suddenly the leak originates from the Warthunder forums because it makes a good article title.
One of the more recent "leaks" was just someone posting this easily purchasable flight manual: https://www.flight-manuals-online.com/product/eurofighter-ty...
1. Jeez the Panther fires slow for a tank with one of the first auto loaders.
2. Wow other people have the same complaint
3. Statement from the developers that they have used the reload times from a technical document written by the french after ww2, where they disassembled and tested a panther for the government
4. Hang on that panther specifcally had its autoloader removed, and was piloted by untrained people.
5. Located a locked thread with pages and pages of technical data, arguments about russian tank favoritism, and ultimately no change.
The devs bring it on themselves by being very much in love with russian hardware, and being very picky about their sources. They also participate in the conversation and that leads to people trying to prove they are wrong.
On the other hand, if you mostly enjoy military hardware in a semiotic and arcade-y way, all official documents simply represent potential ammunition to win internet arguments. You aren't aware of the baroque system of different kinds of secrecy and if you heard of itt you would think it was silly. If the information is "out there" already why wouldn't you post it to settle an internet argument? Surely if you can get your hands on it then any potential enemy has as well.
Video gaming has been mainstream for long enough for me to have had a full active duty and reserve career, retire as a senior officer, and then go utterly ga-ga over Baldur's Gate 3, which came out of early release over a month after I retired. The difference is I know how to keep my NDAs.
Size of the player base? I imagine there are an order of magnitude more daily WT players than there are DCS players, for instance.
And while WT isn't a hardcore simulation, it is detailed enough that obscure technical details can make a difference in gameplay balance, combine that with someone salty about getting blown up in a situation they shouldn't ("the game has that panel 12mm too thin and 3 degrees off, the round actually would have bounced!") and obsessing over their favorite piece of Olive Drab steel, well, we find ourselves in this situation. Yet again.
But I have doubts War Thunder is modeled accurately enough for a real service manual to actually make any difference for any of the players. War Thunder, from appearances, looks very arcadey and designed to be fun for most players. Sims usually involve 20 minute startup sequences, weight balance shifting, etc... I just don't understand this with War Thunder.
The realistic mode can optionally also hold your hands through many aspects of operating the aircraft, at a significant cost in performance, so more serious players will play with "simulator controls" (and will map more advanced things such as changing fuel mixture/prop angle/radiator activation, etc..., like you'd do on a proper simulator).
The developers in theory and sometimes in practice will correct inaccuracies in performance or capabilities if you can point them out from non-classified sources. Unlocking modern vehicles takes 100-600$ or hundreds (sometimes thousands) of hours, and sometimes due to inaccuracies they end up being or becoming non-viable, so some people are irrationally motivated to change that.
Whereas in a more crunchy simulation model, whether one plane beats another or something is going to be tied up in a lot more nuance.
Meanwhile the technical specs of the tank.... Those are absolutely critical because the damage simulation is entirely dependent upon them, because this isn't world of tanks where tanks have hitpoints. When you shoot a projectile, the projectile interacts with the armor, creates spalling (or explodes inside) that then has to kill all the personnel inside the vehicle for it to count as a vehicle kill. Shots that don't kill can disable parts of the tank, activate the ammo rack, destroy the tracks, etc.
A service manual isn't going to tell you how thick a specific section of the armor is, or what composition the armor has or what angle the armor is. Yes this still retains a sort of arcade simulation feel, because a realistic simulation such as this [0] is computationally too expensive to happen in a multiplayer game.
All of these communities have, well, a reputation for a certain type of personality. The old joke is that you can tell an extrovert at the NSA because when he/she is talking, he/she looks at YOUR shoelaces.
People work themselves into prison due to stalking and death threats to game developers over balance issues; "what my in-game tank can and can't do" is a balance issue, even if it isn't a sim.
https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/15/18623545/eagle-dynamics-f-...
At this point its more about the meme than the actual game