Game Freak, the developer behind Pokémon, confirmed a server hack from August 2024 that exposed personal information of 2,606 employees, including their names and email addresses.
In a statement issued in Japanese, Game Freak apologized for the breach and assured it is working to enhance its security measures.
While Game Freak did not provide specifics about Pokémon-related materials that were compromised, leaks circulating on platforms like Reddit and X suggest that prototypes for new Pokémon, older game source codes, and the codename for Nintendo’s next console, the Switch 2, might have been included.
Nintendo has not commented on the matter yet. This attack places Game Freak alongside other studios hit by hackers, such as Insomniac Games, which suffered a major data leak in 2023, and Nintendo’s large-scale “Gigaleak” in 2020, where several terabytes of data, including assets from classic titles, were exposed.
