Client
Duration
Mar 22, 2025
#
Branding
Reigniting a veteran community without losing its soul
A creator-led campaign that brought War Thunder back into the conversation for lapsed players while deepening loyalty among the core community.
About the campaign
War Thunder has one of gaming's most passionate and most critical communities. Winning them back required creators they already respected — not influencers they'd never heard of.
War Thunder is not a casual game. Its playerbase has deep knowledge, strong opinions, and zero tolerance for inauthentic promotion. When Gaijin Entertainment briefed Xercus® on a re-engagement campaign targeting lapsed players, we knew the creator selection would make or break everything. We built a roster of military vehicle enthusiasts, sim-adjacent creators, and long-term War Thunder players whose communities would actually trust a recommendation. Every creator had a genuine relationship with the game before the brief was written.
Challanges
War Thunder's community has seen bad influencer campaigns before. They remember them — and they don't forgive them easily.
The War Thunder playerbase is vocal, analytical, and deeply suspicious of marketing. Previous influencer campaigns from other agencies had generated community backlash for feeling forced and out of touch. Xercus® had to rebuild that trust from scratch — which meant only activating creators who could speak to the game's mechanics authentically, and giving them creative freedom to present the campaign in their own voice without heavy brand scripting.
Summary
War Thunder re-entered the community conversation — this time on its own terms.
The campaign activated 11 specialist creators across YouTube and Twitch, each with documented War Thunder gameplay history. Community response was overwhelmingly positive — no backlash, no call-outs. Re-engagement rates among lapsed players exceeded projections by 44%. The campaign generated 2.8M views in two weeks and drove a measurable spike in daily active users during the campaign window. Gaijin Entertainment has since retained Xercus® for ongoing quarterly campaigns.
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