Koei Tecmo websites, forums down following cyberattack

(Image credit: Koei Tecmo)

A cyberattack on the European branch website of publisher Koei Tecmo has caused the company to take down both the American and European websites. Koei Tecmo said in a statement that some 65,000 accounts on the European forums may have been compromised, with user registration information including account names, encrypted passwords, and email addresses at risk of having been stolen. That information may have been leaked as of December 25th.

At the moment, Koei Tecmo believes no critical information such as credit card details has been stolen. Nonetheless, those with European Koei Tecmo accounts should change the logins of accounts that use similar usernames and email addresses.

Koei Tecmo is the developer-publisher of series like Atelier, Dynasty Warriors, Dead or Alive, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They're known for publishing games based on popular Anime, as well, like Attack on Titan and Fairy Tail.

This is the second high-profile hack of a game company in recent months following the November attack on Capcom's servers that compromised not just large amounts of user data, but corporate information and information on upcoming games.

Update: A previous version of this story misattributed the initial reporting of the hack and the hackers' statements.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.