Game Freak Confirms Hack, Employee Data and Pokémon Designs Leaked
The developer of the renowned Pokémon franchise, Game Freak, has officially confirmed a breach of their servers. Although the incident took place in August of this year, a public statement was only made last Thursday.
As a result of the attack, the perpetrators gained access to confidential information about over 2,600 employees, including both current and former staff members. Game Freak issued an apology to all affected and assured that measures are being taken to strengthen their security systems.
However, the repercussions of the breach did not stop there. Over the past weekend, numerous leaks of internal materials related to the Pokémon franchise began circulating on social media. Among the published data were game source codes, early character design versions, and information about unreleased projects.
Most of the leaks surfaced online after Game Freak’s official statement. The resource Centro Leaks took charge of disseminating the information, starting to publish materials on Saturday afternoon across platforms like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter).
Game Freak has been hacked. This is a new leak like the gigaleak from Nintendo from a few years ago. It has multiple Gigabytes of info.
It includes source code and beta builds of HGSS and BW2. pic.twitter.com/WIZjyuwYuY
— Centro LEAKS (@CentroLeaks) October 12, 2024
The leak has been dubbed “Teraleak” on social media. According to the released data, the source codes for games such as Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver were exposed. Additionally, codenames for future projects were revealed: “Ounce” for the Switch 2 and “Gaia” for the 10th generation Pokémon games.
The leaks also included mentions of a Pokémon universe MMO in development, internal discussions from design meetings, information on the unreleased Detective Pikachu sequel, and plans for future Pokémon movies. A new animated series was even hinted at.
The scale of the leak is staggering: in addition to the source codes, an enormous amount of concept art and early character designs have made their way online.
At the time of this publication, neither Nintendo nor The Pokémon Company has officially commented on the leak situation.
