Electronic Arts (EA), the studio behind the Battlefield, FIFA and The Sims, has been the latest gaming company to be targeted by hackers.
As first reported by Vice, hackers claim to have taken the source code for the Frostbite engine – which powers most of EA’s catalogue of games – along with various other tools, such as software development kits.
It is thought that around 780gb of data was taken in what EA has called a “recent incident of intrusion” in a statement addressing the matter. The company stated that while a “limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen”, no player data has been taken and that player privacy is not at risk.
This breach is the third such incident to happen to video game publishers and developers in the last year. Capcom was the victim of a ransomware attack in November 2020, with hackers stealing sales information, financial information and thousands of people having their personal details stolen. In February of this year, CD Projekt Red were the victims of a targeted cyber-attack, with the hackers claiming to have stolen the source codes for Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3 and Gwent, along with a host of internal documents.
Words by Megan Roxburgh
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