Massive Pokémon leak exposes beta designs, source codes and plans for upcoming titles

Pokemon developer Game Freak has confirmed it suffered a breach as troves of internal materials pertaining to the franchise - from source codes to early and, in some cases, scrapped character designs - hit social media this weekend. In a statement published on Thursday (translated from Japanese), the company said it discovered its servers were hacked in August and that sensitive employee information had been leaked. It did not address the Pokemon leaks, though the bulk of this content appears to have been published online after the statement was released.

Leaked documents and images flooded Reddit and X after Centro Leaks began dumping it all on Saturday afternoon. The Teraleak" files, as some fans are calling it, allegedly include source codes for past games such as Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, codenames for the Switch 2 and the upcoming Gen 10 Pokemon games - Ounce" and Gaia," respectively - references to an in-development Pokemon MMO, and internal discussions from design meetings. There are also details on the purported unreleased Detective Pikachu sequel and other planned Pokemon movies, as well as a new anime series.

The scope of the leak is enormous, exposing tons of beta character designs and concept art in addition to the source codes. Neither Nintendo nor The Pokemon Company has publicly acknowledged the leak yet. Engadget has reached out for comment. Game Freak said in its statement that it's strengthening its security and apologized to those affected by the breach, noting that the unauthorized third-party accessed the personal information of over 2,600 current and former workers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/massive-pokemon-leak-exposes-beta-designs-source-codes-and-plans-for-upcoming-titles-180208503.html?src=rss