Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, social media has seen a spike in misinformation and videos purporting to show footage of Moscow’s war — when the images in reality originate from video games.
For instance, videos allegedly showing Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb — which was carried out by Ukraine’s Security Service on 1 June — have been shared widely online.
EuroVerify reviewed a series of these clips, which have racked up hundreds of thousands of views across social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook and YouTube.
Although at first glance they could appear to show scenes of war — such as missiles, drones, and infrastructure being bombarded — the clips do not have any clear signs which certify their authenticity.
By conducting a reverse image search, EuroVerify found that a number of clips claiming to show Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb have in fact been misleadingly captioned and taken out of context — in reality, they match gaming videos posted by a YouTube channel called UWC.
The channel’s biography states that “all videos on the channel are a simulation of combat operations in the game Arma 3. We are against this terrible war and we want a peaceful sky over the heads of Ukrainians.”
Despite this mention, the channel — like many other similar gaming channels — posts videos which bare misleading titles such as “Ukrainian most massive drone raid destroys two largest Russian factories 1,000 km from borders” and “Daring Ukrainian FPV drone swarm raid destroys 40 Russian nuclear bombers: Tu-95, Tu-160, Tu-22M”.
The gaming developer studio Bohemia Interactive, which created Arma 3, separately reviewed videos sent by EuroVerify, which have been posted across social media platforms, and confirmed that they were made using a “modded” version of Arma 3.
Video game “modding” is a popular activity for gamers, where they customise a game’s features or visuals on their own or with the help of third-party plugins and other materials.
Bohemia Interactive, like many other video game developers, has come out against its products being used as “war propaganda“.
While video game footage has consistently been taken out of context in relation to Russia’s war in Ukraine, this is also the case for other wars and conflicts — as video game recordings have also been presented as footage of the Israel-Hamas war, as well as the recent tensions between India and Pakistan on social media.
Determining whether footage is real can be a very complex task, which has even led certain media outlets to air video game clips on TV.
In November 2022, Romanian channel Antena 3 broadcast an old Arma 3 video, which it alleged showed fighting in Ukraine, additionally asking a former defence minister and a former intelligence chief to comment on the images as if they were authentic.
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