War Thunder Celebrates Five Years With Free Stuff, Discounts, Contest, Halloween, And Xbox Announcement

When you and I turned five years old, we were still getting the hang of reading and counting and moving around the world without injuring ourselves. We sure as heck weren't engaging in aerial dogfights or dodging armor-piercing shells from German tanks, but video games grow up faster than humans, apparently.

War Thunder's open beta began in Russia on Nov. 1, 2012, and to celebrate that five-year anniversary (even though it only officially launched 10 months ago!), Gaijin Entertainment has a ton going on, in addition to a Halloween event. There's a lot to cover, so let's take it one part at a time.

War Thunder is coming to Xbox One and Xbox One X. There's no date given for when this will happen and, indeed, Gaijin CEO Anton Yudintsev sounds exceptionally vague in his statement about the move. He states that Gaijin has "came to an agreement with Microsoft regarding the possibility of running the game on their console," which sounds less than firm, but we'll assume -- like much of the text in War Thunder -- that it's just a little bit of mistranslation. He also says "console" and not "consoles," but whatever.

If you want to win some sweet prizes, you can talk, film, or draw something nice about War Thunder on Facebook to win various in-game packs, premium currency, or the grand prize of an MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard and Ryzen 5 1500X processor from AMD. You've got until Nov. 6 to butter up the devs and take your shot at the giveaway.

As for the game itself, you can obtain a pair of vehicles by winning five matches from Oct. 31 to Nov. 2 and entering a bonus code that will be revealed on the 31st. You can also enjoy 50% discounts on just about everything in the cash shop, from cosmetics to premium time to premium vehicles (except the most recent batch), as well as get some free "thank you" Golden Eagles if you've ever bought some. Gaijin promises that "there is even more to come, so stay tuned!"

Finally, while it's not related to the game's fifth anniversary, per se, Gaijin does have Halloween festivities going on, where you can win a "Witch's Cauldron" trophy and race against other pilots in the "Witch Hunt" event or compete against tankers in the "Tank race on the dark path." The top 1000 pilots and top 1000 tank racers will receive a unique Po-2 biplane for their efforts.