Visual manipulation is one of the most effective ways to spread disinformation and make a claim more convincing – altered, contextless, or AI-generated images are often used as evidence of disinformation. And specifically, the use of video game visuals is one of the prevalent categories of visual manipulations.
The content verified by “Myth Detector” revealed that video game visuals were often used for anti-Western propaganda or to represent the power of Russia, and were used in relation to the Russia-Ukraine war and the civil war in Syria. “Myth Detector” reviewed 10 cases of video game content being distributed as real footage, including:
- Footage of Arma 3 and War Thunder, as if they depicted military operations within the Russia-Ukraine war;
- Arma 3 footage as evidence of US warship sinking;
- Command and Conquer and AC-130 Gunship Simulator footage presented by the Russian government as alleged evidence of Western cooperation with terrorists in the Syrian civil war;
- The use of ArmA and Metal Gear computer games in stories about soldiers by the Russian state media;
- Footage of Age of Civilizations II as an alleged plan for the conquest of Georgia by Azerbaijan;
- Resistance 2’s character as a US biological experiment in human-animal crossbreeding;
- An installation at London’s Meat Market to promote Resident Evil 6 used to claim that human flesh is being traded in Britain.
An American warship sunk by the Yemeni Houthis, the destruction of a Ukrainian tank division or Arma 3?
In January 2024, it was reported on social networks that the Yemeni Houthis had sunk a US warship. The claim was accompanied by photo and video materials. Users on X (formerly Twitter) explained that the footage was taken from the video game Arma 3. The footage from the mentioned game appeared in 2022 as well, this time on the air of pro-Kremlin “Sezoni TV”, when, in order to show Russia’s superiority, it was claimed that the video depicted the destruction of the Ukrainian tank division.
Footage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or War Thunder?
In February 2022, in connection with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, several shots were released, some of which depicted a large-scale explosion and created a false impression of the course of the war. As a result of verification, the circulating video was found to be footage of the computer game War Thunder.
A heroic Russian lieutenant, ISIS movement footage obtained by Russia, or ArmaA and the AC-130 Gunship Simulator?
Footage from a video game was also used during the air of Russia’s Channel One, when the Russian president described the heroism of one of the lieutenants. The footage belonged to the game ArmaA. In addition, Russian propaganda sources have also used footage from the video game Command and Conquer to claim that the West was caught in the transfer of chemical weapons to “extremists”. Another case concerned the footage published by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in 2018 that purported to show the movement of ISIS troops – the footage was actually from a promotional video for the smartphone game AC-130 Gunship Simulator.
Azerbaijan’s plan to conquer Georgia or Age of Civilizations II?
In 2020, the head of the organization “Union of Human Rights Defenders” and currently the host of pro-Kremlin “Sezoni TV,” Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, shared the footage taken from the video game on his personal Facebook account. He claimed that “Azerbaijan dreams of the complete conquest of Georgia and publishes a scandalous clip on the social network”. In fact, the footage was taken from the video game Age of Civilizations II.
Biological Experiment or Resistance 2?
In 2020, the pro-Kremlin online publication “Newsfront” published an article claiming that scientists were ready to breed humans with animals. The article also included visual “evidence” that was actually a character from the video game Resistance 2 named Marauder.
Trading with Human Flesh or Resident Evil 6?
Video game visuals are not always taken directly from the game itself, but are instead a representation of their promotional campaign. In August 2022, several Facebook profiles published a video in which various parts of the human body were placed on counters and in refrigerators. “German television broadcasts footage of the human flesh trade in England,” the authors wrote. In fact, the footage was taken at the London Meat Market in 2012, where a kind of installation was organized to promote the video game Resident Evil 6, and the presented “human body parts” were actually varieties of pork.
Video game footage is actively used to spread disinformation. There are several ways to verify such visual manipulations, which help us find the original source of the visual material, determine where and in what context it was first disseminated.
- Photomanipulation verification tools
Google Image Search
Uploading a photo to the search engine makes it possible to search for: 1) an identical photo; 2) the text related to it; 3) Websites where the photo is posted.Tineye.com
It is a photo search engine that shows: identical photos on different websites, blogs, forums; date of publication; How many times one specific photo was published on the same resource.Reveye Chrome extension
By integrating the RevEye Chrome Extension search engine into Chrome, it is possible to easily search for the photos listed above as well as in other search engines. - Videomanipulation verification tools
InVID
The program will split the desired video into keyframes, and by checking the frames, you can find the video in other sources and determine the real context.
