The company that partners with Nintendo on the Pokemon video game franchise has admitted to being hacked, but confusion reigns over what exactly was stolen, what has been leaked, and what impact it may have on the lucrative franchise’s future.
On social media people are already asking for access to the coding and information about other valuable assets including the Switch 2.
Game Freak – the 35-year-old Japanese company behind Pokemon video games – has apologised after it was hacked, but it has only said so far that employee and contractor names and email addresses were taken. Nintendo had not made any comment via its press room.
However, it is being widely reported that following its initial statement, source code, new games, past projects and unused, beta Pokémon designs were being shared around the internet following the hack.
At the time of writing, Game Freak does not appear to have officially acknowledged that anything more than the workers’ details were accessed.
Engadget reported that “Leaked documents and images flooded Reddit after Centro Leaks began dumping it all on Saturday afternoon”.
Centro Leaks has more than 426,000 followers on X. At the time of writing it was still dumping information purportedly from the hack.
“The ‘Teraleak’ files, as some fans are calling it, allegedly include source codes for past games such as Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, codenames for the Switch 2 and the upcoming Gen 10 Pokémon games — ‘Ounce’ and ‘Gaia’ respectively — references to an in-development Pokémon MMO, and internal discussions from design meetings,” Engadget said.
“There are also details on the purported unreleased Detective Pikachu sequel and other planned Pokémon movies, as well as a new anime series”.
If this is correct, it represents a potential disaster for Game Freak and Nintendo. As one Reddit poster put it: “Chinese copycat devs are going to have a field day with this.”
A statement on the Game Freak website in Japanese was headlined “Notice and apology regarding the leak of personal information due to unauthorised access”.
“Game Freak has discovered that personal information of our employees and others was leaked in connection with unauthorised access to our servers by a third party in August 2024,” the company said.
“We sincerely apologise for the great inconvenience and concern this has caused to all those involved.”
The company said the personal information of current and former staff, and contract workers, had been accessed. It says only names and company email addressed were taken.
The statement said the “number of items” accessed was 2,606.
Game Freak said it was contacting the affected employees individually.
“For those who cannot be contacted individually due to resignation or other reasons, we will notify them through this announcement and set up a hotline to handle inquiries regarding this matter.”
The company said it had implemented measures to “prevent recurrence”.
“We have already rebuilt and re-inspected the server, and will strive to prevent recurrence by further strengthening our security measures.”
