the developer of “Pokémon” victim of major data theft

Creatures remaining at the stage of simple preparatory drawings, preliminary versions of graphic elements, working documents describing the universe, development tools, or even source code for entire games… Since Saturday October 12, users of social networks and specialized forums like ResetEra exchange, comment and analyze files which seem to come from a huge data leak suffered by Game Freak, the company behind the main games Pokémon.

In an official press release, the Japanese studio confirmed on Sunday October 13 that a security breach had indeed affected its servers. “ Game Freak discovered that our employee information was leaked using unauthorized third party access in August 2024. We sincerely apologize for the great inconvenience and concern this has caused to everyone concerned “, declares the company.

The company, which claims to have since closed the breach, estimates that the data (names, postal addresses and Internet email addresses) of more than 2,600 employees (current and former) or contract workers have been compromised. Game Freak does not, however, confirm the veracity of the data regarding its games that are currently circulating online – and are presented as being linked to this data theft.

More than a terabyte of data claimed

If the large number of files included in the archive put online (Internet users claiming to have access to it speak of a terabyte of data) makes systematic verification work virtually impossible, it is for the same reason very unlikely that it would have been falsified in its entirety.

There we find, jumbled together, texts exploring the universe of titles sometimes more than twenty years old, but also working documents relating to unreleased games, such as Pokémon Legends: ZA (scheduled for 2025), or the machine supposed to succeed the Nintendo Switch, named by its supposed code name. Requested by The WorldNintendo has not followed up at this stage.

By its nature and scale, this incident is reminiscent of a similar data leak, which Nintendo was the victim of in 2020. Nicknamed “Gigaleak” by Internet users, it consisted of some two terabytes of data disseminated slowly and anonymously on the forum. 4chan. They contained, among other things, game source codes, prototypes, design documents for old machines from the manufacturer and emails from employees. Without commenting on the content of the files found in the wild, Nintendo nevertheless publicly acknowledged the existence of security vulnerabilities concerning it.