Even Japanese gamers notice Arma 3 gameplay being used as fake Gaza conflict footage 

A video posted on October 10, described as depicting an Israeli soldier shooting down a Hamas aircraft, has been circulating significantly on X/Twitter, with over 1 million views at the time of this writing. The Japanese gaming community has taken notice of the fact that the video is actually gameplay footage from the poplar simulation game Arma 3, and posts pointing out the fact have been showing up one after the other. 

The video in question shows a soldier launching what appears to be three consecutive homing missiles from the ground at a helicopter far off in the air, with the helicopter exploding and crashing after being hit by the third missile. The original poster’s caption presents the situation as an Israeli soldier shooting down a Hamas aircraft that had entered Israeli air space. The post is tagged with numerous hashtags currently relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

As the video started circulating, users started pointing out how unnatural and CGI-like it looks, and in no time, it was identified as being from the popular tactical shooter simulation game Arma 3. The game is known for its life-like graphics and realism and features existing weapons, combat vehicles and similar. The exact gameplay video from Arma 3 that is currently circulating as real-life war footage from Israel was posted as a YouTube short by @rimstudio in March this year under the title “Attack Helicopter shot down by Acurrate FIM-92 Stinger Missile l St.85 MilSim ARMA 3.” In the description of the video, the poster states, “It’s Just a Military Simulation. Not Real life.” 

Judging from user interactions with the post distributing the fake video, a large portion of the public has likely interpreted the footage as being real, but the number of users pointing out that it is in fact fake is fortunately increasing, with the post’s community notes also being updated to include the explanation “This is a Military Simulation from the video game ARMA 3.” 

This is apparently not an isolated case, as there have been other instances of Arma 3 gameplay footage being used as misguiding/false information throughout the Gaza conflict, as well as in other situations such as the War in Ukraine and conflicts between India and Pakistan.