Pokémon video game developer and co-founder of The Pokémon Company, Game Freak, has officially acknowledged the recent data breach, with some sobering revelations.
As translated by OatmealDome on Twitter, they shared this statement on their official website:
“Due to unauthorized access to our servers in August 2024, personal information on our employees was leaked. We apologize to those affected.
- Leaked personal information
Data related to our employees
Leaked data: Names, company e-mail addresses
Number of affected people: 2606 (including contract workers and former employees)
- Response
We are contacting each affected employee individually.
- Measures to prevent recurrence
We have rebuilt and reinspected the servers, and will ensure that this incident does not occur again through further improvements to our security measures.”
Now, we don’t know exactly what happened yet, but we believe YouTuber Aero has a very good roundup of how things played out over the weekend, and what most likely did happen.
As Aero explains, this all started with a 4chan user who shared some information about Pokémon Legends Z-A, and then revealed they had 4 GB of data. In actuality, they acquired over a terabyte of data from Game Freak, and they have been slowly sharing that information.
As Game Freak claims employee information was compromised, these leaks also corroborate that in the most unsavory manner. One of the images from the leak shows a work screen, which also shows the name of a Game Freak employee who was logged into their computer.
While Aero did not disclose the employee’s name, they did corroborate that this person can be cross referenced and appears as staff who worked on games like Pokémon Sword & Shield, Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and Pokémon Scarlet & Violet.
If this was a case of a former employee being guilty of misconduct, it is highly unlikely that they would have allowed their identity to be revealed. So Aero believes that this employee was the victim of social engineering, a method of hacking where the hacker communicates with their target, convincing them they are someone who also works on Pokémon. This information was shared because they thought it was needed for work.
While we can see fans already speculating wildly on material that was found in the leaks already, we will point out two things. One, a lot of the things The Pokémon Company kept to themselves does not necessarily relate to real hidden lore. As you may imagine, a lot of unused ideas and rough drafts are lumped in there, and there may be no indication on which parts are canonical and are not.
And we should not have to explain this, but we should take this as seriously as the hacks perpetrated against Rockstar Games and Insomniac Games over the past five years. There are legitimate concerns for the safety of these employees now, as the adult side of the Pokémon fandom do not have a great track record.
We wish the best for Game Freak’s and Nintendo’s employees, and hope they can secure themselves immediately.
