Nintendo has acknowledged a data breach that includes employee information, following a claim that the company’s own systems had been hacked.
In a statement, Nintendo said its own servers had not been impacted, but accepted that “an issue” had occurred with TinyPulse, a third-party service it used for employee surveys.
Posts on social media show self-styled “extortion as a service” group ShadowByt3$ demanding a $2 million ransom in a bid to stop it leaking the names, email, and bank records of Nintendo employees, as well as survey data, progress plans and details of the company’s top-performing staff.
“Nintendo’s systems have not been compromised, and no personal customer or financial data has been accessed,” a Nintendo spokesperson said in a statement to Nintendo Life. “The data involved is limited to internal survey content comprising a small subset of our employees, and most of the information dates back several years.”
In other words, this situation will not result in the leak of development details and assets — as occurred previously in the high-profile 2020 Nintendo “Gigaleak” or the subsequent “Teraleak” of data extracted from the servers of Pokémon developer GameFreak.
Nintendo made no suggestion it was engaging with the extortion group, and indeed, suggested it expected the survey data to be posted online.
“We appreciate our employees’ willingness to share their perspectives, take all feedback seriously, and take action when needed,” Nintendo concluded. “We are working with the service provider to address the issue.”
Exactly what could be revealed within Nintendo employee feedback remains to be seen, though Nintendo of America has previously been criticised by some staff for its handling of temporary worker contracts — something IGN previously investigated.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
