On Saturday, October 12, 2024, the internet was flooded with information regarding upcoming Pokémon games, past Pokémon titles, and unreleased information about Nintendo’s own plans. All of this came “courtesy” of what the internet has deemed the “Game Freak Teraleak,” a massive data breach of developer Game Freak that contains information dating back nearly 30 years. Some of the leak holds interesting tidbits about the history of Pokémon, including the source code for beloved titles. At the same time, other data includes personal and sensitive data of employees and customers.
Pokémon developer Game Freak hacked – games, artwork, and company data leaked
This latest leak came out of nowhere during an otherwise uneventful day. With no new Pokémon title scheduled for the next few months (if not an entire year), it doesn’t even make sense why anyone would want to dig through the Game Freak’s files at present. I suppose anyone with a social media account who really wants clout will compromise not only themselves, but innocent programmers, developers, and company personnel in the process.
In case you don’t quite believe any of this is true, Game Freak has fully acknowledged the leak in a statement on its website. Surprisingly, it confirms that a third party gained access to Game Freak’s servers over a month ago, though it wasn’t caught until recently. It also mentions that 2,606 employees were impacted, which is a shockingly large number.
If this sounds familiar to you, it’s likely because this is the second time (technically the 11th, though the previous leak was dug through slowly) that this has happened to a Nintendo-affiliated brand. Back in 2018, information regarding Nintendo’s secrets started to get leaked onto the internet by hackers who claimed to have access to Nintendo’s private servers. The initial leaks contained not only ROM data for the Chinese iQue Player but also early Pokémon designs.
It wasn’t until 2020 that a set of data which was several gigabytes large was unleashed online. That’s where the title of “Gigaleak” comes from as the sheer amount of data was unprecedented at the time. It also contrasts against Game Freak’s leak, which is reportedly a terabyte in size. Normally, a leak of studio information would contain photos and documents, not entire dumps of ROMs, source codes, prototypes, and personal files. It kept getting deeper and deeper as 2020 went on, as well. To date, it is one of the largest data breaches of a gaming company in history, though it may have just met its match in terms of scope.
Now, you might think that Nintendo Wire would want to comment on the contents of this leak or spread the news of what is inside of it. To the contrary, as interesting as some of the information might be, that’s not how this website operates. While Nintendo certainly has an issue with maintaining its history and never likes to talk to press about anything more serious than a game demo, stealing the information from them is not how we should go about things. The previous Gigaleak seems to have made Nintendo more litigious and I have a feeling this new one will do the same.
Just to make things clear, the current leak will likely not affect Nintendo. Game Freak is an independent developer who happens to work on the Pokémon series for both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. Game Freak occasionally develops other games, such as Pocket Card Jockey, Little Town Hero, and Tembo the Badass Elephant, but are primarily known for Pokémon. Nintendo won’t be happy about this leak, but unlike the previous Gigaleak, this doesn’t directly affect the Big N.
The Pokémon Company, on the other hand, is likely fuming. Having all kinds of personal and developmental information out in the wild about one of the biggest entertainment franchises in history is not good. While I don’t know for certain what kind of prototype designs are even in this leak, everyone likely knows that developers like to have fun when trying to figure out specific concepts in games. There could be more adult-oriented Pokémon designs hiding somewhere that, when plastered all over the internet, will begin to dominate search engine inquiries. This could have devastating effects on the brand, especially when it concerns parents (see Activision Blizzard trying to scrub Overwatch adult content from the internet as a not-quite-the-same parallel).
With regards to the games industry, however, this Teraleak may have the biggest effect of all. Anyone who has worked within the industry will know how ludicrously tightlipped PR can be about anything. It took until the early 2010s before games journalism started to become something more than just an extended arm of PR. Getting any information out of game companies is next to impossible and while the audience is hungry for it, leaks only make executives up top even less willing to talk. When your company loses a terabyte of information, you’re probably going to shut up for at least a decade.
That is going to have a devastating impact on preservation, too. Nintendo already doesn’t like emulation, but efforts such as the Dolphin Emulator have remained online due to their reverse-engineered code. If we suddenly see native PC ports of older Pokémon games, serious doubt will be cast upon the validity of that code. The Pokémon Company, Game Freak, and Nintendo could all simultaneously sue whoever released that port and then prevent anyone else from attempting to do the same ever again. We’ve seen it with Switch emulators already, though those were likely targeted specifically because the Switch is Nintendo’s current console.
I can fully understand wanting to dig through this leak and see all kinds of neat information about Pokémon that Game Freak will likely never publicly discuss. I can also understand how vital having the source code for older games is as any modern ports will be far more accurate than they otherwise would be without that code. At the same time, leaks such as this only do more harm than good. It’s great to learn more about the history of a brand that has become far bigger than its creator ever dreamed, but it should not come at the cost of anyone’s privacy and safety.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
