In a press release published in these minutes on its Japanese site, Game Freak has confirmed that it has been the victim of a large data theft which in the last few hours has led to numerous internal materials from the games (and not only) of the series being shared online Pokémon.
According to the press release, in August the company noticed unauthorized access from which thousands of files were downloaded, including personal information such as the name and email address of 2,606 people who worked for Game Freak over the years. The company said it is notifying those affected and has already taken steps to improve the security of its systems.
However, in the Game Freak press release there is no mention of the theft of data regarding the Pokémon universe. Without going into details, late yesterday evening assets, images, betas and source codes of some titles from the Nintendo DS generation began to circulate, such as Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver and Pokémon Black 2 and White 2. What is therefore missing is a confirmation of the veracity of these files and information, which may not necessarily be real.
This Game Freak data theft certainly brings to mind Nintendo’s infamous 2020 “gigaleak,” which revealed canceled games, prototypes, source code, development tools, and internal communications that had remained secret until then.
