Nintendo has seemingly been hit with a massive data breach by a prominent hacker group, potentially revealing many of its assets, developer previews, budget information, and more. There is no initial indication that players’ personal information has been stolen in this apparent hack against Nintendo, but hackers are claiming to have made off with more than 570 GB of company data.
So far, 2025 has been a very successful year for Nintendo. The Nintendo Switch 2 has just passed a major sales milestone, with the company announcing that it has sold more than 2.4 million units in the United States alone during its first three months of availability. However, amid that success and positive receptions to first-party games like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, this year may also be remembered for a major cyberattack.
Nintendo Data Breach May Have Leaked 570 GB of Data
A new claim by hacker group Crimson Collective seems to indicate that its members have digitally infiltrated Nintendo’s files, making off with a ton of unreleased information. Nintendo has yet to officially confirm this supposed breach, but posts on social media have shared images of what appear to be dozens of file folders with titles that indicate they contain assets, production and preview information, stress test data, and more. The group cheekily shared the image with a caption that reads, in part, “Who said we do not have Nintendo topics files,” indicating that the group may now hold sensitive information regarding upcoming Nintendo games. Previously, Crimson Collective has been credited with data breaches against AWS clouds like those used by Red Hat and Claro Colombia, and it also claimed defacement of Nintendo’s website in September.
If confirmed to be true, this is likely to become the most prominent data breach Nintendo has directly suffered in more than five years. In April 2020, Nintendo confirmed hackers had breached accounts of more than 160,000 users, compromising their Nintendo Network IDs tied to the Nintendo eShop through their Wii and 3DS devices. User passwords and payment information were not included in the data stolen in that breach, but it was still enough to push the company towards higher online safety standards, including two-factor authorization.
More recently, a data breach at Game Freak resulted in the biggest slew of Pokemon leaks in franchise history. Though reportedly carried out in August 2024, Game Freak did not confirm the successful hacking attempt until months later. While both companies are separate entities, Nintendo and GameFreak were jointly responsible for creating the Pokemon game franchise and, alongside Creatures Inc., the three businesses share ownership of The Pokemon Company, which is responsible for the franchise’s marketing, publication, and more.
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