Pokemon dev Game Freak has suffered a teraleak that includes 25+ year old Pokemon art, assets and documents, as well as canceled movies.

Nintendo Life was the first to report that a flood of never before seen Pokemon art, design documentation, and other development materials have appeared on social media. All of this material is believed to be a result of a massive security breach at Pokemon developer Game Freak. Game Freak has released a statement that confirms it was hacked, and that employee names and contact details were compromised.

CentroLeaks is a reliable source for Pokemon leaks and rumors. The majority of material allegedly obtained from the hack is shared on X, the "Everything App", but the PokeLeaks Subreddit also has a plethora of content supposedly obtained through the hack. CentroLeaks dubbed it the "teraleak", in reference to Nintendo's similar 2020 "gigaleak".

Vagrantwade is a moderator at r/PokeLeaks. He said that his team is "having sift a bunch fakes that people now are trying to sneak through" and that it is difficult to determine where the posts originated. Some of the things I've seen include:

• WIP sprites for Gen 3, 4, and 5.
• Concept art for the original 1997 animated film.
• Design bible background lore for the Pokemon setting.
• Minutes of a Pokemon Company Meeting about ending the 26-year journey for Ash Ketchum, a perpetual 10-year-old.
• Topline pitches include a Detective Pikachu sequel and a film with the working title, "Game Boy".
• "Ounce," is a codename for Switch 2.

Game Freak posted a Japanese-language announcement on October 10, confirming it had been hacked. However, the company has not confirmed that Pokemon design material was part of this hack. According to (presumably machine-generated translations) from Twitter users Adrien190303, and brayshgaming Game Freak's servers were compromised in August. Game Freak revealed that the hack compromised the names and email addresses of 2,606 employees and contractors, including current and former employees. Wikipedia states that Game Freak had 207 employees in this year.

Game Freak, and in particular its co-founders Ken Sugimori and Satoshi Tajiri, created the Pokemon brand. Game Freak is the developer of the main Pokemon games, while also being involved in the creation of spin-offs, adaptations, and spin-offs.

We're still navigating the initial tidal waves of information and misinformation relating to the leak. Its full contents and ramifications are likely to become clear over the next few week. I'm curious about Game Freak’s official statement. While I cannot be certain of the legitimacy of the posts claiming to be from this hack, the sheer number of posts indicates that more than just employee contact information was compromised. It's possible Game Freak does not want to legitimize material in circulation by announcing it, but I wonder if the information from an August hack was used in a phishing attack this weekend for "teraleak." This would explain the two-month gap between the reported hack and the current rush.

This GameFreak "teraleak", however, joins a long list of high-profile games industry security lapses. Some of the biggest names from the past come to mind:

• Valve's Half-Life 2 Beta hack from 2003
• The 2020 Nintendo "gigaleak", which was previously mentioned,
• Nvidia's GeForce Now 2021 exposes unannounced game titles
• The 2021 hack is a CD Projekt.
• The 2022 Rockstar hack which revealed Grand Theft Auto 6
• Hacking Insomniac last year included art and assets for its Wolverine game, which is yet to be fully revealed.