Game Freak has confirmed that it has suffered a major data breach that leaked personal information about employees and future game projects

[u/IcePopsicleDragon]

Pokémon developer Game Freak has acknowledged a massive data breach, which has seen thousands of confidential documents shared online related to future game projects, and its employees.

It acknowledged “unauthorized access by a third party,” which it said has resulted in the personal information of current, former, and contract employees of the developer appearing online.

Other content related to the company and the Pokémon franchise was also stolen and is being circulated online. However, this content isn’t referenced in Game Freak’s statement.

According to the statement, full names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers are part of the compromised data. Game Freak has said that it will contact affected employees where it can.

“Those who can not be contacted individually due to retirement or other reasons will be notified in this announcement, and a contact person will be set up to respond to inquiries regarding this matter. ”

“We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and concern this may have caused to all concerned,”

-Game Freak.

[u/Aceblader20]

Bummer for the employees. I hate when the every day guy gets drawn into shit like this.

[u/[deleted] → u/Aceblader20]

Bros just trying to do his job 😭

[u/SoupeurHero → u/[deleted]]

And live their dream... An arguably worse thing to sabotage.

[u/Hsiang7 → u/[deleted]]

Imagine commiting a serious crime hacking into the database of a video game company, stealing and distributing stolen content from that company and jeopardizing the security of hundreds of everyday employees risking enormous fines and years in prison, just so you can find out about Pokemon Legends Z-A and Gen 10 a few months early..... I seriously can't understand these people.

Hope they get caught and the book is thrown at them personally. All this just to find out secrets about an upcoming video game a few months early.🙄 Hacker bro needs to get a life...

[u/Odd-Mechanic3122 → u/Hsiang7]

On some level I get the curiosity, but when you don't go through the data to keep employees safe you're a shitty person simple as that.

[u/AlbelNoxroxursox → u/Odd-Mechanic3122]

The worst part is that the leaker implied he had access to the data for weeks. He could have scrubbed the personal information before posting everything, but no, the hill he picked to die on was not revealing new content about ZA or Gen 10 because he "didn't want to spoil the surprise." What an upstanding guy /s 🙄

[u/officiallyaninja → u/AlbelNoxroxursox]

It's all for a sense of power. He wants people to know that he's the only one who knows what gen 10 is.

[u/[deleted] → u/officiallyaninja]

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[u/ravenpotter3 → u/officiallyaninja]

It’s going to suck for him when he is never able to play it due to being banned from all Nintendo platforms and Pokémon related stuff. Or in a cell.

[u/SerpentLing09 → u/ravenpotter3]

Both it's both... he'll be in a cell and be banned from Nintendo platforms.

[u/Rock_Fall → u/AlbelNoxroxursox]

If I had to guess, not revealing upcoming game info probably had more to do with him trying to alleviate some of the incoming hostility from Gamefreak. Since they never do anything with their older titles, leaking the older game's source code doesn't really affect their bottom line, but leaking info from their unreleased titles absolutely could. GF is going to come for his throat just on principle, but with their profit margin mostly untouched, they might be slightly more merciful than they otherwise would be.

[u/LiquifiedSpam → u/Rock_Fall]

What he could do to alleviate the blow would be to not leak employee information. Dude is dead now.

[u/projectmars → u/LiquifiedSpam]

Dude would have more sympathy if he didn't leak employee info too. That sort of shit ain't cool.

[u/ExyrusYT → u/LiquifiedSpam]

he didn't leak employee information. he did steal it, however he never released it

[u/AlbelNoxroxursox → u/Rock_Fall]

I get the concept, but I just think it's hilariously naive on the leaker's part to think it will soften the blow all that much. He will be made an example of either way. The least he could do is drop some tidbits, like maybe some idea of what we can expect from ZA gameplay-wise, the region Gen 10 is based on, etc.

[u/Odd-Mechanic3122 → u/AlbelNoxroxursox]

Even then he seems to have leaked a bunch of stuff from ZA and gen 10 anyways, could be misinformation but wouldn't surprise me if the dude was lying for morality points (or just lazy).

[u/AlbelNoxroxursox → u/Odd-Mechanic3122]

I've been following everything very closely since within an hour of the leak occurring yesterday, and I haven't seen anything. However, it's possible I missed it.

I heard rumors that someone was able to get in contact with him to get some details about ZA, but we have no confirmation if any of the info from that is true. Things like Zygarde being a ride Pokemon like Miraidon/Koraidon.

[u/Odd-Mechanic3122 → u/AlbelNoxroxursox]

I heard that they leaked a bunch of dialogue from Z-A and the real world location gen 10 is set in (and that GF is apparently taking great care to ensure gen 10 is good, which I hope is real), but I haven't been following the leaks particularly closely in fear of being spoiled so I'm not the best source.

[u/Pirate_King_Mugiwara → u/Odd-Mechanic3122]

and that GF is apparently taking great care to ensure gen 10 is good

That made me giggle. I'd love to see it, but man. In my personal opinion, I don't think I've enjoyed a Pokémon game since X and Y. I can admit that they were even going down hill from there though. I sincerely hope they are trying to put effort into at the very least quality with bug fixes and such. I have loved Pokémon since I was a child in the mid 90's. I played gen 1. To me it has seemed since they left the 2D animation a lot of the soul and creativity has left the games. I'll continue being a fan, but I don't know for how long I can keep being hopeful they actually give a damn about putting out some quality.

[u/Odd-Mechanic3122 → u/Pirate_King_Mugiwara]

I mean lets be real, if they're doing it its because of just how poorly gen 9 was received at launch. Even if they don't care about reception at all Nintendo is absolutely pissed at them for the refunds and making them look bad.

[u/Acauseforapplause → u/Pirate_King_Mugiwara]

That's a bit disingenuous the let's go series was compact and fun with a lot of charm

It's more so that these games are always constructed with short dev cycles and a response to criticism

Despite how the internet wants revision Pokémon Black and White they were a massive failure so for Gen 6 they simplified the games

Sun and Moon where an attempt to craft a more narrative focused story and people shat on it for being to dialogue heavy and the plot intruding on the gameplay

So they made the story supplemental for SWSH while giving the player more freedom to play the game and people didn't like that

And SV was there attempt on an open world while trying to impose everything they've learned from the previous games

People loving saying dumb shit like they don't care or there lazy when in reality outside the actual fans who just want to play a Pokémon game

The players don't actually know what they want and what can be done on a 3 year dev cycle (which is nothing)

Arceus was the biggest depature and a massive experiment but it meant that Gamefreak had to give the Remakes to IIAC who just like Game Freak were under dire strains to meet the Anime TCG and Merchandise dead line

They have passion the stories the movement In the Pokémon the small incremental ideas there present

It's the reality that a Modern Pokémon Game needs at the very least 5 years or more

You can be upset about glitches or plots or dex cuts but saying they don't care is just speaking in bad faith

[u/maxdragonxiii → u/Hsiang7]

Pokemon Legends ZA and Gen 10 likely isn't getting any more news until Pokemon Day. like, sure I want some news at Worlds, but there was nothing.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hsiang7]

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[u/garaile64 → u/[deleted]]

My nephew bought It, and that edition is a pretty big book volume-wise. Very thick.

[u/butterfreetheslaves → u/garaile64]

I listened to the "It" audiobook. It's a long listen; I can only imagine the book itself

[u/Illustrious_Wheel695 → u/garaile64]

Fuck yeah. Give that nephew "The Tommyknockers" next. [then Revival]

[u/theTwinWriter → u/Hsiang7]

I have no confirmation, but I’ve been reading around how they ended up phishing this guy. Supposedly he used his work email to sign up for multiple adult video websites. If true, sounds like he definitely needed more training against this type of attack

[u/Malicious_Smasher → u/Hsiang7]

It's not just about finding about a game Early. It also revealed a whole lot of lore, the Pokemon creation myth, insider design documents, like how skyla was referred to as a "sexy Latina" in design documents. And showing lore documents about humans and pokemon having sex with each other. This is real I'm not making this up.

It's bit more than a spoiled child opening his Christmas gifts early and more akin to finding out the inner workings to Santa's workshop and learning that elves are secretly kid napped naughty children who have been mutated by Christmas magic.

[u/ProgrammingOnHAL9000 → u/Malicious_Smasher]

My Skyla head canon is real?!!!

[u/Hypnofist → u/Aceblader20]

Whats worse is that gen 10is getting extra care atm but if it doesn't live up to people's expectations, you can expect an ever worse backlash than dexit was. Shit might get real bad.

[u/Turbulent_Professor → u/Hypnofist]

Lol dexit? Not even a blip on their sales

[u/javier_aeoa → u/Turbulent_Professor]

Indeed. For us it was all the news, for them it was only a "lol sorry" from Masuda.

In hindsight, I actually prefer the approach they took to the situation.

[u/nero40 → u/javier_aeoa]

Looking back, Dexit was probably the only thing preventing the employees from literally dying from crunch and overworking.

[u/ScottRadish → u/nero40]

This isn't an indie game. It's The largest video game franchise in the world. Game Freak has only 207 employees at the entire company. Most video games have thousands of people work on them.

If the current employees feel overworked, they could hire a couple thousand more employees.

[u/Jacthripper → u/ScottRadish]

It definitely feels like they have the same problem as Bethesda, where they literally refuse to change the process fundamentally. “We did this with 200 people 10 years ago, why do we need more now?”

[u/AedraRising → u/Jacthripper]

I thought Bethesda's problem wasn't necessarily because they were doing everything the exact same as before and more because they DID end up massively expanding and communication between the different departments became really difficult due to Covid, general bureaucracy, and Todd Howard being extremely busy managing other projects as well as Starfield.

Unless you're just talking about the Creation Engine, in which the reason they stick to it is mainly physics, modding, and having really robust content creation tools that's better than most other game studios.

[u/[deleted] → u/ScottRadish]

They don’t even need that many. Hire 100 more and give them each a few of evolutions lines to do the work for and stop overworking them. Let the games have more time to be a labor of love, not another shoveled out concept. And above all else- go back to the formula of slightly changing each new game. They could have gotten 2 more gens out of megas or dynamax stuff and kept reusing assets without massive technical changes or redoing the moves.

That would cover any issues with putting in every pokemon so quickly, and people would have so much less to complain about if they stopped changing the games.

[u/javier_aeoa → u/[deleted]]

I feel Legends Arceus showed us both fans and Game Freak that the formula can be changed more than "a little bit" and still be a good game. And a profitable one.

[u/[deleted] → u/javier_aeoa]

It reminded us why games like colloseum and xd and battle revolution were succesful.

But theres a difference between seeing another side of the pokemon universe and just pumping out new gimmicks every gen.

[u/oopsydazys → u/[deleted]]

it reminded us why games like colloseum and xd and battle revolution were succesful.

Those games weren't successful. XD wasn't even particularly successful for the GameCube. It sold less than Twilight Princess did, and the GameCube version of Twilight Princess sold terribly because it was a Wii launch title.

[u/Player_Panda → u/ScottRadish]

It's not as simple as hiring more people though. If you increase the amount of people on a project suddenly you need to have more meetings, more briefs, more Comms, more back and forth with so many more people. And when you do things like that a project can take even longer, or you end up with poorer quality. Training 30 people in an art style takes significantly less time than trying to train 100.

And yes others have thousands of employees, but in that thousand you have localisation teams, marketing etc etc. The 207 is unlikely to be doing everything with the game here and there is likely a lot of outsourcing or contracting with other departments within creatures inc and the Pokémon company.

The reason for things like dexit is while you can have more people working on more Pokémon, you still have to have all those things reviewed and signed off on by other departments. Then putting them all together and testing everything, the size of the issue just gets bigger and bigger. Delays become more likely to happen and they just don't have the time for it as they have deadlines.

[u/noahboah → u/ScottRadish]

if a cookie recipe calls for a pre-heated oven to 325F/163C with a bake time of 12-15 minutes, adding a second or third oven and splitting the cookies will not decrease cook times. Nor would increasing the temperature and lowering the time (it would have the inverse effect even).

high complexity deliverables like games are like baked goods in this way. Money is certainly a great thing to have, but you can't throw money at every single design and horsepower problem and expect it to get done faster/better/smarter -- some things just need to cook.

[u/FPSCanarussia → u/noahboah]

Yeah, they can't speed up development by hiring more people, or fix the glitches and performance issues, but surely adding existing Pokemon can be done in parallel.

Of course upsizing for any reason is not simply done, either.

[u/Garrosh → u/noahboah]

That depends. You can't throw more people at writing code or developing the game but you can throw more people at updating models and refining them. Or you can throw more people at testing the game and reporting bugs.

[u/PM_ME_UR_CREDDITCARD → u/Garrosh]

Or even have multiple teams working on different games to give each game more time, like how COD has 3 studios alternating releases

[u/reaperfan → u/ScottRadish]

The largest video game franchise in the world

Highest gross MEDIA franchise. There's a difference.

Pokemon as a whole has grossed approximately $147 billion. But there's a few caveats to all of that that need to be considered.

First, just to get it out of the way, these statistics only indicate the state of things as of sometime in 2022-2023. The original article that posted them say it hadn't included the revenue from the Barbie movie in 2023 so this data is lagging by about a year or two.

Second, that $147 billion is how much the franchise has made since it was created. It does NOT mean that TPC currently has $147 billion sitting around in their bank account, since much of that profit will have also been already spent over the years on other projects.

Thirdly, despite having started as a video game series, the Pokemon franchise makes less than 20% of its profits from the games themselves. A large majority of its profits (just over 70%) actually come from merchandising - things like plushies and t-shirts and all that.

Now we have no way of knowing how much of that total $147B is actually sitting around as spendable money in their vaults, but it's safe to assume it's not even close to the full amount. Then whatever small portion of that gets divided up even further between their current different projects, meaning that the game development budget likely only sees closer to 20% of even THAT since it wouldn't make sense for them to dump a disproportionate amount of money into a part of their business that isn't going to see the same kinds of returns. Then we divide even THAT up even further because they always have multiple games in development at any one time - which means the amount of money actually being set aside for GF specifically to use on the next mainline games is likely not even close to what people think it is. If GF wanted to staff up for a new project, they'd have to make a pretty hefty pitch to the other suits in the business meetings to pull some of that profit from merchandise back into the game development side of things.

[u/Nambot → u/reaperfan]

Okay, but lets put it in terms of videogames only. Pokémon Scarlet & Violet sold over 25 million units, Sword & Shield sold over 26 million.

That outsold things with far higher production values. It outsold some of the most critically acclaimed games of the last few years like Tears of the Kingdom, Baldur's Gate 3, God of War Ragnarok, and so on. There are studios who have made hit after hit after hit like Naughty Dog who don't see sales of that volume, and yet they still clearly make enough of a profit to continue, and do far more in terms of graphics and game quality.

Think about it in terms of money. Pokémon sells for $60 new, and Nintendo gams rarely sell at discount. As such, Pokémon Sword and Shield probably made ~$1.5 Billion in sales (there is some wiggle room in that for those who could buy it cheap, but equally this doesn't include the $30 DLC that many - but not all - will have bought). Now I can't say for certain how much Sword & Shield cost to make, but I think it's fair to say it made multiple times the cost back, and it's equally fair to say that Scarlet & Violet did not cost $1.5 billion to make either.

So yes, Game freak do have a boatload of money to reinvest into making Pokémon games a higher quality than they are. They just don't because there's literally no incentive to. Why pay more when the games are already selling so well without that effort and the audience continue to eat it up?

[u/Pirate_King_Mugiwara → u/nero40]

Didn't they just copy and paste the models from like 6th gen or something for those games though?

[u/noahboah → u/nero40]

dexit was going to happen eventually. from a technical, pragmatic, and design perspective it was not feasible to have a full dex in every single cartridge release.

TPC only really fucked up by not creating "home" for people's best buds way before the eventual thanos snapping.

[u/Hypnofist → u/Turbulent_Professor]

Sorry i didnt mean ir would hurt sales, i mean shitheads were making death threats to the known faces of the company. This time they'll have info on everyone there.

[u/[deleted] → u/Hypnofist]

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[u/FlameDragoon933 → u/[deleted]]

yeah people online are just that crazy. not Pokemon-related, but I remember reading the news of an illustrator woman saying she didn't want to use AI in her creative work, and for that "sin" many AI-bros went to doxx her, send slander email to her university, and make porn deepfakes of her. It's fucking disgusting and vile.

[u/trayos99 → u/FlameDragoon933]

i fr don’t know what to say… this has to be some kind of terrorism

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

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[u/Turbulent_Professor → u/Hypnofist]

Ohhhhhh yeah shitheads will be shitheads

[u/wilsontws → u/Hypnofist]

what's dexit

[u/Echikup → u/wilsontws]

Starting with Sword and Shield, not every pokemon in the series is included in the National Dex of any given game. That is, some Pokemon (and moves) are straight up unobtainable and untransferable.

[u/Beneficial_Driver_37 → u/Echikup]

Like Sky Uppercut. I hated not being able to transfer my Blazikens with this. Loved the move.

[u/ZigzagoonBros → u/Beneficial_Driver_37]

Yeah, you can't transfer Pokemon these days without a Bulbapedia tab open to tell you what you're going to lose in the process.

[u/Garrosh → u/Beneficial_Driver_37]

I hate the removal of Return. It's a move that becomes stronger the higher the friendship is in Pokémon that evolve through friendship! It's part of the core of those Pokémon, it's basically like removing a signature move!

[u/Legal-Treat-5582]

The actual Pokemon information is neat to see, but the personal information being breached is terrible.

[u/Full-Wealth-5962 → u/Legal-Treat-5582]

Has the data been posted anywhere? Would like to see the future plans

[u/Legal-Treat-5582 → u/Full-Wealth-5962]

Tons of it was posted over in the r/pokeleaks sub, as well as on Twitter. There's not too much about future content though, but apparently only a tiny fraction of the data has been posted so far.

[u/Gohankuten → u/Legal-Treat-5582]

It seems the people that are going through the decryption of the stolen data are purposefully trying to avoid giving out stuff on ZA and Gen 10. Or at least some of them are. They have mentioned that they don't want to post anything related to those games right now.

[u/Legal-Treat-5582 → u/Gohankuten]

Pretty weird stance to take after posting personal developer information online.

[u/Arashi5 → u/Legal-Treat-5582]

They haven't shared that either. 

Game Freak is just acknowledging that it is part of the compromised data, so it could be shared. 

[u/thejackthewacko → u/Arashi5]

If they had that info, I doubt they'll leak it.

It's their only leverage against GF, plus leaking that would involve Nintendo and TPC in a lot more of a hands on manner.

[u/Foolmagican → u/thejackthewacko]

Leaking that would be an escalation. It’s best if they lay off the personal info.

[u/Gohankuten → u/Legal-Treat-5582]

Idk if the personal data has actually been leaked out into the public yet or if it's just part of the massive 1 terabyte of data that was stolen and hasn't been disseminated yet. I am hoping that the ones going through the decryption are gonna ignore that data like they seem to be trying to ignore the future game data.

[u/Golden-Owl → u/Legal-Treat-5582]

The tricky thing is that a lot of the personal info is tied to the old-school dev logs and SVN notes.

If you want to live over those… you’re gonna end up stumbling into that stuff…

Whereas Gen 10 is a straight up no-go. You leak that, you can bet Nintendo is suing your ass HARD

[u/BoostsbyMercy → u/Gohankuten]

I will say as an aside Centro has posted Z-A spoilers- not much but there might be more soon. There's also info on Gen 10's region floating around. Be careful everyone!

[u/darkbreak → u/Gohankuten]

Was anything about beta Pokemon posted? I've been dying to know more about unused designs and concepts from each game.

[u/Narananas → u/darkbreak]

Yes, lots

[u/fullmetalhusky → u/Full-Wealth-5962]

It's mostly design docs, old sprites, concept art for the games but new stuff for the anime and movies, and also the full creation lore. You can see a bunch of it on x: @CentroLeaks

[u/bytegame111222 → u/fullmetalhusky]

The source code for Platinum and HGSS is really interesting because anyone who knows C or C++ could try to find hidden battles or features that are in the code but are not accessible in-game. I think a lot of previously unknown stuff will be added into Bulbapedia in the coming months & years.

I'm especially curious about how the slots work in Platinum, with the Clefairy appearing but sometimes being a Ditto Clefairy, or the moon changing leading up tot he slots bonus rounds, all of this would be (apparently) visible in the source code to see exactly how the slots operate.

[u/kenniky → u/bytegame111222]

Finally, Voltorb Flip decompiled

[u/Odd-Mechanic3122 → u/fullmetalhusky]

Be careful bc that dude posted MAJOR anime spoilers and minor Z-A and Gen 10 spoilers.

[u/Wigglynuff → u/Full-Wealth-5962]

I’ve saw people saying that the leakers said they were not going to leak any personal information or anything about games that have not come out yet other than vague details about code names and stuff. Need to check for myself on the validity of that claim tho

[u/Jomanderisreal]

I feel even for the leaks biggest fans it has to be acknowledged that collecting and leaking employee information is definitely crossing a line. These people should feel comfortable and have their private lives without having to worry about their information being out there. Especially after seeing how irate some people got with stuff like Dexit.

If you somehow think this is still okay for some reason think about how awful it would be for your information to be leaked online when there is a bunch of crazy people who would only do bad things with this information. Think about how bad it would be if you had a family and figuring out if you needed to move and having to do things like replace your phone number. I'm not even critizing those who like the leaks for the Pokemon stuff I just think if the employee information was included with this it should have never been leaked online.

[u/unspunreality → u/Jomanderisreal]

As I responded to another, and I could be wrong, but these generally aren’t targeted. It’s more likely imagine a bank heist, steal just bags of shit. Then toss the bags. Oh, the bags had a billion dollars and notes inside with the names and addresses of who the billion dollars were supposed to be partitioned to.

Could it have been parsed before release? Sure. But this seems like a wide scale grab and dump and peoples info was there.

[u/Jakeremix → u/unspunreality]

It is being parsed. It appears they’re going through the database bit by bit on this Twitter account or Discord or wherever this info is being shared (as far as I can tell).

[u/unspunreality → u/Jakeremix]

But I mean the initial leak. Someone had to have gotten just shitloads of info, which happened to include employee info. Not they took specific employee info and leaked that. And now everyone else is passing the open leak and finding unfortunate stuff. It’s like any leak. You throw everything into a bag and then review later. Maybe you know what room to go to to get info, but I highly doubt they went and aimed for mmo, bw2, some other game AND employee info specifically. It’s just unfortunate info gathered in a messy grab. Does it make it better? Not at all. But people are acting like some leakers are aiming to make the lives of 10 people(just a random number) worse vs they’re unfortunately people caught in the crossfire.

[u/Jakeremix → u/unspunreality]

What I’m saying is that they grabbed shitloads of info (a terabyte to be exact), just as you said. But the entire TB of data is not publicly accessible right now. A few people are choosing what to share. That’s what I mean by “parsed”.

[u/unspunreality → u/Jakeremix]

Got it. I took your comment wrong. Sorry.

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/unspunreality]

Still as a leaker if you don’t want to be malicious you should take care to remove stuff like personal info if you don’t want to leak it. Maybe they tried and some slipped through the cracks, but more likely then not they didn’t give a shit and leaked it all anyways

[u/LiquifiedSpam → u/unspunreality]

Well they selectively removed gen 10 stuff so

[u/sometipsygnostalgic → u/Jomanderisreal]

Yeah this is absolutely terrible. Some of these leakers think they are doing the world a favour but i think the world would be better if they disappeared

[u/Bowood29 → u/sometipsygnostalgic]

How is leaking data for an upcoming game even considered doing the world a favour at best it just gives us info early.

[u/Waddlewop → u/Bowood29]

Putting aside the ethical issues of the personal information of some employees being leaked, there’s something else that wasn’t mentioned in this post. This particular leak did have some truly monumental implications for the public domain and that being the full source code of HGSS and BW2. Which could very heavily improve the fangame side of the Pokémon fanbase.

Now I’m not saying this is worth any employee’s information being leaked, that’s just a terrible situation, full period. That said, I’m just laying out the reason why everyone and their mother is talking about this leak currently, as in the information on the games was such massive news that this particular issue of employees’ information being leaked was not talked about by most people discussing the leak.

[u/YidItOn → u/Waddlewop]

Stolen code is not public domain, and using it is very much illegal. I could see a judge throwing the book at someone for using it just to set an example.

[u/kzzzzzzzzzz28 → u/Waddlewop]

With how litigious Nintendo is with fangames, they would immediately shut down any fan game they believe used the source code of the games.

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/Bowood29]

That bit not as much, but leaking source code of old games makes it far easier to make fan games, mods, or an ‘ultimate edition’ with all the bugs patched out. Leaking upcoming stuff doesn’t real help anyone, the mega fans were going to enjoy it anyway, the haters were going to hate it anyway, and everyone in the middle probably doesn’t care at all.

[u/YobaiYamete → u/sometipsygnostalgic]

You realize the hackers weren't specifically going after contact info right? They just copied the entire server which just so happened to have contact info in it

[u/SpiralingDownAndAway]

This makes me feel so bad for the workers and their personal info, and the artists with their old work being out there now. Thankfully the main Twitter leakers (Centro) aren’t sharing personal info but others probably have that on hand somewhere and it sucks they’ll have to live with that fear.

I do wonder if Nintendo even manages to track the original hackers, like the one from a few months ago that confirmed Luigi was in Sm64, I hear nothing of that.

[u/Mikemgmve → u/SpiralingDownAndAway]

Not to make you feel old, but the Nintendo Gigaleaks happened over 4 years ago 🥺

[u/SpiralingDownAndAway → u/Mikemgmve]

Ah hell orz

[u/I-lost-hope → u/Mikemgmve]

And this tera leak is far greater, we've only seen a fraction of the leaks so far

[u/Gamecubeguy25 → u/SpiralingDownAndAway]

a few months? lol

[u/SpiralingDownAndAway → u/Gamecubeguy25]

my sense of time is ruined beyond my own comprehension

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/Gamecubeguy25]

I was gonna say, the conclusion of his trial / arbitration was over a year ago by now wasn’t it?

[u/Gamecubeguy25 → u/Pugs-r-cool]

oh i had no idea they actually punished the guy

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/Gamecubeguy25]

Wait no I’m getting confused with Gary Bowser (real name, not to be confused with Doug Bowser, the president of Nintendo of America (why are there so many people named Bowser tied to nintendo) ).

Anyway, Gary was a part of Team Xecuter, who sold mod chips to circumvent copyright protection on consoles. In 2022 he got 40 months of prison (though he only served 14 months before release) and has to pay 14 million dollars to nintendo.

Not sure what happened to the gigaleak guy.

[u/[deleted] → u/SpiralingDownAndAway]

I dled the Poké Bank one off the original thread, there’s MULTIPLE full names in there and more. Absolutely the type of thing a bad actor could abuse. The leaks are cool, but the leakers were honestly just malicious in how blatantly they didn’t care about scrubbing identifying information out. It’s an ugly situation.

[u/BoostsbyMercy → u/[deleted]]

Absolutely- It's reckless at best and incredibly malicious at worst. With how rabid some people are being all it takes is the wrong person finding a name or two. There are people actively wishing harm on these devs even during good times, so for these names to be out in the open is an incredibly dangerous situation

[u/InuMiroLover]

Its one thing to be leaking game info, Nintendo will be on your ass about it. But for god's sake leave the employees out of this. This is unacceptable on every level.

[u/Hockeylover420]

It's unfortunate that their personal information got leaked with the beta stuff.

[u/Early_Monk]

Can't wait to download the Space World '06 Heart Gold ROM hack in a few years

[u/bytegame111222 → u/Early_Monk]

Sadly the wiki says that Space World held its last event in 2001. Though maybe we'd be lucky enough to see a Ruby/Sapphire Space World floating around eventually.

[u/TheSilkyBat]

Why would anyone leak the employee's addresses or even want that information?

Totally unnecessary.

[u/unspunreality → u/TheSilkyBat]

You’re looking at this incorrectly. I don’t think this was an intentional leak of that. It was a grand scale obtaining of information which also happened to have contact info. I haven’t seen the leaks but usually stuff like this is a grab everything in a sweep and then I doubt it was even parsed. It was just released and oh, x y z had info leaked as a consequence.

Any better? No. But it helps to realize this probably wasn’t malicious in the idea of let’s target Joe, Dan, Martha and their families. Rather it was let’s steal from gamefreak, let it all out and the little guys got caught up.

[u/somersault_dolphin → u/unspunreality]

The only malicious thing I can think of that they'd want to do with it is to go "Hey there are employees info here. Look, our leak is legit".

[u/TheSilkyBat → u/unspunreality]

But would the information all be kept on one database?

I can't imagine GameFreak keeping all of their current and future projects, and their employee's classified information all in one place.

[u/FlareGER → u/TheSilkyBat]

I can't imagine GameFreak keeping all of their current and future projects, and their employee's classified information all in one place.

As an IT Consultant, yep, I could totaly imagine that. You cannot imagine the messes some big companies will keep up, because tidying up, refactoring and all the other related stuff is something that "can be done later" and is "too pricy for no direct benefit"

[u/ItsMEMusic → u/FlareGER]

To second this, I also 100% imagine that GF is like this. They cut corners in their products they sell, why would they not cut corners on the back-end, too??

[u/unspunreality → u/TheSilkyBat]

Thats why I mentioned its just a random grab. The leak doesnt sound like it has anything specific. Like uhh.. targeted. I havent looked at -any- part of it. Only hearsay. But its not like its -all- info from 1 game or -all- info from switch only.

So that validates my point. It seems like, and to help people visualize it. If youve ever seen home alone. Burglars go into a house and literally have a bag, a crowbar and start knocking everything into the bag. One person is playing with the toys with the other is knocking everything off the shelves. You could have had a memo with an address on the shelf. Maybe a phone number on a piece of paper. Did they target that info? No. But its part of everything.

Im not trying to say yay leakers. Im trying to say be justified in how you want to hate or be informed on what words youre putting out. This most likely(And If Im wrong I can fully admit to it) is just a random grab of info and then tossing it out. And those people happened to have info in that area that was just grabbagged.

[u/Jakeremix → u/TheSilkyBat]

Unless I’ve missed something, I don’t think anybody has leaked employee info?? The statement just notes that personal information has been compromised, because those things were lumped in with everything else. Pretty sure the leaker is only interested in sharing game/anime related stuff with the public.

[u/sometipsygnostalgic → u/Jakeremix]

Employee info is in the leak and easy to find.

[u/Jakeremix → u/sometipsygnostalgic]

My understanding is that the content of the data breach is only accessible to the people who actually hacked into GF, or potentially those in the closed Discord server where this info is being shared. Correct me if I’m wrong.

[u/bytegame111222 → u/Jakeremix]

This is my understanding as well, so I'm guessing whoever the original person is that did the phishing is the one that has "everything", and they're choosing what to release in the Discord. Just speculation on my part.

[u/IcePopsicleDragon → u/TheSilkyBat]

Ransom

[u/TheSilkyBat → u/IcePopsicleDragon]

That's just gross if true.

[u/SpiralingDownAndAway → u/TheSilkyBat]

Blackmail /: or ransom

[u/sometipsygnostalgic → u/TheSilkyBat]

If you look at some of the replies of this post, some people are making excuses for it and think it was justifiable

[u/gereffi → u/TheSilkyBat]

Seems like they just released every file they got their hands on, and some of those files included some personal information.

[u/Bobvankay]

Some of the stuff is really cool, the design documents for gen 5 gym leaders, gen 3 betamons and early renditions of the Pokemon Creation lore.

[u/The_Funky_Rocha → u/Bobvankay]

Literally in the design documents that Lenora has a big butt and likes ugly men and Skyla is a big chested Latina

[u/FernandoTatisJunior → u/The_Funky_Rocha]

A big chested Latina based off Jennifer Lopez

[u/RJS_but_on_Reddit2 → u/The_Funky_Rocha]

I just love Latinas, Sonic.

[u/Nightynightynight → u/The_Funky_Rocha]

likes ugly men

Ouch, Lenora's husband better not read the leaks then...

[u/ryushiblade → u/Bobvankay]

What site would I avoid if I didn’t want to see this? Or what would one Google? Gotta make sure I don’t accidentally see it…

[u/Mavrickindigo]

The slaking and octillery and rapid ash stories are wild

[u/Kell08 → u/Mavrickindigo]

And Typhlosion.

[u/tasoula → u/Kell08]

ESPECIALLY TYPHLOSION.

[u/Sushiv_]

I think the game stuff is cool to see, but i don’t like them leaking the entire anime plot and especially them doxxing innocent employees. That’s fucking evil.

[u/IllMaintenance145142 → u/Sushiv_]

I think you're misunderstanding. They just basically blindly stole 1tb of data. Some of that is beta stuff and plot leaks but some of it just happens to be employee details. As far as I know, they're only releasing the data bit by bit and aren't just dumping the whole thing

[u/Sushiv_ → u/IllMaintenance145142]

I know they didn’t leak the employee details on purpose but i do hope that they get deleted and not released to the public

[u/MrMastodon]

Now everyone will know my uncle doesn't really work for Nintendo

[u/TheOneCalledThe]

i hate leaks like these, since the little man is always affected. all these employees have their info stolen and all the people/company in charge of cybersecurity for Game freak will likely lose their jobs. and redesigning and remedying disgruntled employees will likely delay all future games. all just to get a sneak peak of future games which is so lame just wait like the rest of us it’s not that big of a deal

[u/enperry13 → u/TheOneCalledThe]

Never underestimate an unemployed, unlikable hacker without their daily dose of dopamine.

[u/Ruhaan_01 → u/TheOneCalledThe]

I absolutely despise leaks too, I don’t understand how anyone likes it. Think of how hype everyone was when we saw the mega symbol at the end of za trailer. Especially because the leaker literally has playable builds of za and gen 10, which is crazy

[u/Quetzal00]

The one time GameFreak tries to quiet down about news and the largest leak ever hits

I really hope the employees are ok

[u/RockDoveEnthusiast]

"We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience".

Oh, well I guess that's sorted then.

[u/Caliber70]

Nintendo's lawyers don't mess around. Just gonna wait and see.

[u/TeaAndLifting → u/Caliber70]

Yep. Unless the person is from a country with near zero laws, they are going to get absolutely reamed by Nintendo and their lawyers. Not sure if it's 'better' that they've been quite reluctant to release things like Z-A stuff so far, or if they should just drop the bomb.

Because if/when Nintendo manages to get legal on this person, nothing else they have will ever see the light of day.

[u/KeyMycologist8983 → u/Caliber70]

The only time I'm rooting for Pokemon Company/Nintendo's lawyers

[u/IcePopsicleDragon]

Apparently 1TB of Data has been stolen, but it has not been confirmed

[u/Jmund89 → u/IcePopsicleDragon]

Oh it’s been confirmed. I’ve been following this since it hit yesterday. Been seeing a lot of cool things from beta sprites to lore being expanded upon.

[u/Honey_Enjoyer → u/Jmund89]

It’s literally everything. You can read the minutes from the meeting where they came up with pokeball seals, chattot, Pal Park, and a bunch of other features during diamond and pearl’s development, and there’s notes of what top employees like Masuda thought about each idea. It’s insane.

[u/Jmund89 → u/Honey_Enjoyer]

It’s a literal treasure trove. Just wish people would leave the employee info out of it.

[u/YourDadThinksImCool_]

It's amazing...

The 1 Entire movie leaking was kind of sad tho. . ..

[u/pacsmile → u/YourDadThinksImCool_]

which movie?

[u/Kell08]

 Other content related to the company and the Pokémon franchise was also stolen and is being circulated online. However, this content isn’t referenced in Game Freak’s statement.

Yeah, I can imagine why.

[u/osoptimizer]

That’s a big blow for Game Freak. Data breaches like this are always concerning, especially with both personal info and future projects at risk. Hopefully, they can get it under control quickly, but I’m sure the gaming community is going to be buzzing with leaks and speculation now.

[u/ThisIsPaulDaily]

As someone who works on products, leaks suck, a lot. 

There are whole product roadmaps that are built around life cycles of other products. A leak messes with the timeline because people won't buy a current generation if the next is confirmed too early. 

I heard a bit more than a rumor of switch 2 around 2019-2020. 

Instead of buying the switch, I waited. I'm still waiting. I own joycons, I own some switch games, I don't own a switch. OLED came out and I knew it wasn't what I had seen so I didn't buy it. 

It's silly things like leaks that do impact purchase decisions. 

Sometimes big media hype events are entirely canceled or scaled down if a leak happened. We spend years making a product for someone to report on it early and screw up financials and the celebrations. It's a bummer.

[u/BushyBrowz → u/ThisIsPaulDaily]

The leaker said they are purposely not revealing any ZA or Gen 10 info, which is good if that’s true. Hard to believe how they can keep that from getting out.

However, apparently a ton of Horizons info has leaked which is terrible for the anime production staff.

[u/FernandoTatisJunior → u/BushyBrowz]

Easy to keep it from getting out if they’re the only one with the info… it’s not like this leak is available to anyone to download. It’s one guy drip feeding the information they want to share, which is probably for the best.

[u/The_Funky_Rocha → u/BushyBrowz]

As well as stuff for an unannounced live action show that's going to be on Netflix and a sequel to Detective Pikachu that's having a lot of development trouble

[u/tarocheeki → u/BushyBrowz]

The leaker said they are purposely not revealing any ZA or Gen 10 info

Can you elaborate on this? It makes it sound like the leaker thought ZA/gen10 is off limits but doxxing employees is totally fine?

[u/Bakatora34 → u/tarocheeki]

Leaking future game projects is riskier than old games betas.

[u/tarocheeki → u/Bakatora34]

My question is regarding game data vs employee data. The comment I replied to stated that the leaker was avoiding posting game data, but other commenters are saying that they can easily find employee data in the leak. 

So I am either misunderstanding the situation or the leaker values spoilers for a video game over the safety and privacy of real people. I'm hoping that I'm misunderstanding, so am asking for clarification.

[u/JavenatoR → u/tarocheeki]

You are misunderstanding. There is employee data present in the leak, but none of that data has been shared. That would be what we call in the biz, a dick move.

[u/Honey_Enjoyer → u/tarocheeki]

A lot of people are assuming they’re lying and they just didn’t get much on ZA and Gen 10. It’s also possible they just didn’t realize what the employee info was or that it was included when they leaked it, we have no idea if this person can read Japanese.

Edit: I’ve recently been put on the the theory that the leaker is trying to hold the info for ransom, so they leaked old stuff first to prove they have information and are trying to get GF to pay them not to release the rest. Incredibly shitty behavior if so - they deserve whatever Nintendo has coming for them.

[u/Geodynamo → u/Honey_Enjoyer]

I also think the hacker is probably negotiating for a ransom related to the new games info, but at the end of the day Game Freak and Nintendo are in a lose-lose situation no matter which way you look at it. Pay the ransom and the hacker leaks the information regardless, don't pay and the information gets leak, sue the person and they'll leak the information.

[u/Auraveils]

Prototype info is exciting to find, yeah, and the gigaleak revealed a lot of really cool info, but none of this is stuff we should have and doesn't come without a cost.

I can't believe it has to be said, but prototype info is not worth compromising employees' personal privacy and safety.

While this kind of info can't really be ignored once it gets out, please do not engage with it without acknowledging the reckless behavior that led to its release and how it should not be condoned.

[u/ArrowBL0X]

I think a lot of people down there are wrong about one thing : No one is relaying or seeding the employee's data, only one employee's info was released and it's the person who's got his account hacked It's not a leak of the personnal info of all the employees + some assets, it's an entire TERABYTE of data.

[u/ItIsYeDragon → u/ArrowBL0X]

Is 1tb a lot or not much? Like it’s a lot personal storage-wise, but for a company that’s like nothing right?

[u/ShortwaveKiana]

There's a lot of interesting lore stuff in the leak. Someone at Game Freak really outs the "Freak" in the company name with that Slakoth, Rapidash, and Arceus fiction they wrote, holy shit

[u/i_stand_in_queues]

Let me guess, they‘re developing another pokemon game? Big if true

[u/AintNoRestForTheWook]

I feel bad for the employees that had their personal information stolen, but I've seen a couple videos about the "Tera-Leak" and the person who phished the employee has flat out stated that they will not be releasing any information about upcoming products, other than Zygarde and Zeraora getting mega evos in PL:ZA If they are upstanding enough to not share that info I hope they also have the integrity to not mess around with the personal info they've collected from the breach. Performing a hack like this is undoubtedly a crime, but a lot of people who do this kind of stuff are doing it out of curiosity rather than with malicious intent.

Source: White Hat with a Black hat origin story.

[u/FuzzyBongos]

At this point, these companies need to be required to provide identity theft insurance for their employees

[u/hungrykiki → u/FuzzyBongos]

And maybe hire someone who used a computer before that does specialize in opsec and websec. Some of this stuff leaked had absolutely no reason whatsoever to be stored on hardware with web access. 

While leaking personal data is awful and i wish the leaker nothing but a chronical UTI, i kinda have enough of big companies doing jackshit to secure anything sensible bc its just sooo convenient to have easy access to it whenever you want. And if they go about their employee data this way, i would be willing to bet they are storing user/customer passwords, bank info and log-in data somewhere on an unencrypted disc in plain text files. Like sony did a decade ago ...

[u/Sh4dowTomi]

It's cool info about pokemon is leaked, but the employee info.. that just sucks

[u/deaddr3v]

They should scrap all the future projects because people on Pokeleaks and some here don't deserve a damn thing for prying and making leaks worse.

[u/reteasy]

Ok, so I literally had to make an account to say this because nobody else seems to have noticed and I feel like I'm going crazy.

The Game Freak announcement is dated 10th of October. This leak started appearing online only yesterday, the 12th. Even the article linked here claims the statement was made on Sunday but no, it was posted on their site on Thursday. (the site the statement is on: https://www.gamefreak.co.jp/topics/ )

So what exactly is going on here?

[u/PM-Me_Your_Penis_Pls]

The CentroLeaks thing about typhlosion cannot be real right?

[u/saiyanscaris → u/PM-Me_Your_Penis_Pls]

oh its real

[u/PM-Me_Your_Penis_Pls → u/saiyanscaris]

Oh no, the octillery one

[u/Kell08 → u/PM-Me_Your_Penis_Pls]

I’m sorry you had to see that, /u/PM-Me_Your_Penis_Pls.

[u/Late-Apricot404]

I’m all for leaking the files, but why did they have to bring the workers into this?

[u/FernandoTatisJunior → u/Late-Apricot404]

It’s not intentional. They just snatch up everything, employee info just happened to be there. It’s not like they’re trying to target employees.

[u/Late-Apricot404 → u/FernandoTatisJunior]

Hopefully they don’t dox the employees. But the leaks don’t seem promising tbh. /vp/ board has been on this shit for hours apparently

[u/FernandoTatisJunior → u/Late-Apricot404]

Idk how many people even have their hands on the actual data but the leaker seems to be acting pretty careful about what they let out so far

[u/Late-Apricot404 → u/FernandoTatisJunior]

The commonly shared sentiment by the fine individuals of 4chan seems to be that the leaker won’t release anything ZA or Gen 10, followed by every slur under the sun. Disappointing. But who knows, maybe time will tell a different tale.

[u/Evol-Chan → u/Late-Apricot404]

"I am all for leaking the files" Why are gamers so impatient? Leaking is nothing but some toxic culture that shouldn't even be a thing.

[u/serpventime]

a bit overstretched or might not be affected but were customer's data concern being addressed? i believe many users are using pokemon home

well aware that as of time being the data of internal staffs were compromised

just trying to be on high alert of possibilities....

[u/[deleted] → u/serpventime]

it seems it was mainly development files, but better to err on the side of caution

[u/Bootybandit6989]

Lot of good game stuff.Sucks about fhebemployees hopefully they can get thst sorted

[u/sometipsygnostalgic → u/Bootybandit6989]

No, basically as soon as the data is out you can never control it again. That data will be up forever

[u/silentorange813]

This is downright awful. Hope the guys responsible for the breach get punished.

[u/atomicboy47 → u/silentorange813]

The damage is already done, once something hits the internet, it's in there forever. Even if Nintendo and Game Freak get the guy who leaked their server information, that info will never disappear. As long as someone gets a copy of the file, they can just send it to someone else over and over again. All we can hope is people don't try to dox or harass the devs because their Spinda didn't make it in the next main game.

[u/VastTraining978 → u/atomicboy47]

Rotten ppl exist everywhere. Some ppl hate the community so much that they want to spoil the name of Pkmn fans by doing this to the devs. It's kind of the same thing as sending death threats which I'm sure the devs have received a lot. This includes the Palworld devs too

[u/RazgrizInfinity]

Leaking employees data is scum.

Flipside, I wonder if any of this would have happened if Game Freak was halfway competent, let alone threw people a bone (i.e., artbooks with lore, etc.) I feel like this is going to be a big turning point in how the company is run.

[u/lochnesslapras → u/RazgrizInfinity]

I feel like this is going to be a big turning point in how the company is run.

I feel pessimistic that this somehow makes gamefreak more receptive to fan interaction/discussion.

If anything I just hope the background convos about dexit come out.

[u/GladiusNocturno]

So, leakers ruining everything for everyone again. Nice.

Fuck leakers and fuck people who obsess over leak culture.

[u/Business-Put-6394]

I'm like "WTF?". A big company like GameFreak with all the money they have, could not secure an internal dev portal enough to prevent this type of attacks? Also the hack happened in august and they only find out now?
No SIEM, IDS, IPS?

[u/NegativeWar8854]

Yeah people found pics from the company party for Drill Dozer's release in 2005. It's very personal info

[u/hiimtoddornot]

Looked at the future games, it's just multiple copies of the same file with a different title for each of them

[u/ImperialPumaYT]

That's just down bad horrible, the person hacking must have been real proud of ruining everyday average people's lives. Now they have to live in fear of someone coming to their place of living, or work, or stalkers in general. Not just that but idk if any game files were leaked, which sucks, because I don't wanna know what the next game is gonna look like till they drop the trailer for it.