Visual Arts, the owner of the Key brand, known for titles such as Air and Clannad, issued a statement on June 4, explaining that the company had recently suffered a major data breach. According to the PDF file detailing the incident, the whole gold master build of the company’s latest title anemoi was leaked, and there is a possibility that other personal and confidential information may have been compromised.
Visual Arts has confirmed that the gold master build of anemoi, had been uploaded without permission to an overseas website on April 19, prior to the game’s official release on April 24. Upon investigating the leak, the company concluded that there is a high possibility a third party stole the authentication credentials for their cloud storage and internal portal system, running off with the game as well as other confidential information.
As a result, the company filed a report to Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission on May 11, and says it will be in contact with other relevant authorities regarding the incident.
According to Visual Arts, over 10,000 pieces of personal and confidential information have been compromised and possibly leaked by a third party. This includes personal information of company employees, customers, business partners, job applicants, and other related parties. However, as the situation is still being investigated at the time of writing, the numbers and information presented in the company’s statement have not been finalized yet.
On the other hand, except for the leakage of anemoi’s master build, there haven’t been any other confirmed cases of Visual Arts’ personal and confidential information being disseminated or abused.
The company has already begun taking measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again. This includes revamping internal system credentials and log-in rights, setting up a 24-hour monitoring structure, establishing a system to detect suspicious actions within internal servers, and strengthening information security training for employees.
Additionally, Visual Arts’ official online store VA STORE has temporarily suspended all new orders, and the website has been put under maintenance at the time of writing. In case you suspect you’ve been affected, Visual Arts has established a Special Contact Point to which you can make an enquiry directly (for contact details, please check out the full document via X).
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