Bioware's Neverwinter Nights forums hacked, passwords and phone numbers compromised

Neverwinter nights

Another day. Another hack. Bioware's Neverwinter Nights forums have been hit by "a highly sophisticated and unlawful cyber attack." According to Bioware, "user names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, mailing addresses, names, phone numbers, CD keys and birth dates" have been compromised. Sensitive information like credit card details and social security numbers were not affected by the breach.

Bioware have sent emails out to affected users with Neverwinter Nights forum accounts, saying that "if your username, email address and/or password on your Neverwinter Nights account are similar to those you use on other sites, we recommend changing the password at those sites as well." They've also set up a FAQ page about the hack, explaining that BioWare Edmonton's Neverwinter Nights forums were the only system affected.

"While we have security controls in place, even the best software and processes can't keep up with hackers 100% of the time. We have moved swiftly to implement additional security controls to prevent this type of breach from happening again to secure your data and are conducting further evaluations now."

There's no clue as to who perpetrated the hack, but it's the latest in a long, long trail of cyber-crime that has erupted over the last few months. Thousands of user details have been stolen and numerous game websites have been brought down. Epic , Bethesda, Eidos, Square Enix , Codemasters , Sony , Nintendo, Minecraft, Eve Online and more have been affected by the ongoing attacks. From the looks of it, they're not going to stop any time soon.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.