The number of gamers in the world continues to grow. In fact the exponential rise of the medium in the past few decades has seen gaming vie with movies in popularity, while some calculations put the number of players at a staggering three billion. However, its success does mean there are agents and actors out there who are trying to take advantage of the myriad communities within the medium. Microsoft president Brad Smith recently claimed that one such actor are the agents of the Russian intelligence agencies and private military company The Wagner Group who are trying to “penetrate gaming communities” (viaEurogamer). Smith highlighted Minecraft and Discord, and elaborated that Microsoft’s threat analysis team had identified Russian efforts to get into gaming communities more generally.Related:I Lived Through Russia’s Invasion Of Kyiv, Then Atomic Heart Dev Mundfish Blocked Me On Twitter"They’re just in part using this as a place to get information into circulation", Smith said. The Microsoft boss was speaking at Semafor’s World Economy Summit where the topic of recently leaked Pentagon documents came up, with sensitive information relating to the ongoing Ukraine war. The documents seemed to leak from a gaming chatroom and apparently contains information on British special forces deployment, among other details. You can watch the discussion in the video below:
Although Smith said the issue is not the biggest priority for Microsoft to worry about, he noted that gaming communities happen to be a good place for The Wagner Group and Russian intelligence to get information into circulation, with journalists ultimately getting wind. Smith claimed that playing games like Call of Duty would not “lead to deaths in the real world” as “these are video games”.
Russian intelligence has not been the only group that are infiltrating gaming communities. It’s been widely reported that far right groups are increasingly trying to spread their ideology using video games. Academics and anti-extremism groups in theEU,United Kingdom, and theUnited Stateshave identified far-right activists using online games such as Roblox, CS:GO, and Call of Duty, among others, to spread white supremacist language and talking points.
As for the recently leaked Pentagon documents, these were discovered via a Discord chatroom,reportedlyrun by a young gun enthusiast who shared the highly classified military documents in a group for gamers. The Pentagon is apparently hard at work trying to find the culprit. This should all serve as a reminder to gamers to be vigilant against nefarious individuals and groups in the gaming sphere.
