Kadokawa Group, the Japanese media conglomerate that owns FromSoftware, has been subject to a malicious cyberattack, the company confirmed.
The group owns several game studios including FromSoftware, developers of Elden Ring, and Acquire Games, developers of Octopath Traveler. Outside of gaming, they are also involved in publishing and film. They also own the popular streaming service Niconico, which has been directly affected by the cyberattack.
On June 27, Kadokawa released a statement addressing the issue, which included the fact that the ransomware attack has been ongoing since June 8. They expressed “deep apologies for the significant inconvenience and trouble caused to its readers, users, writers, creators, business partners, shareholders, investors and other stakeholders by the system failure.”
They stated that their top priority is to restore their accounting functions due to how fundamental they are to business operations, and that they expect this to be concluded in early July. They are also prioritizing ” the manufacturing and distribution functions in the publication business,” due to how much revenue is generated by those functions.
Kadokawa did not mention many of its subsidiary companies by name so it’s unknown how much of an effect the attack has had on specific companies. However, the statement mentioned several broad areas of its operations.
Judging by the statement, the publishing arm is one of the worst affected. The distribution of e-books was delayed due to the cyberattack, and shipment of existing (that is, not new) books is at one-third of the normal level while the company develops a solution to the attack.
The Niconico web services have also been affected, with all Niconico family services currently suspended and users left unable to log in to services that use their Niconico credentials. However, the media giant is working to resolve this and users will see services gradually returning to operation.
The gaming arm of Kadokawa was not mentioned in the statement, suggesting that these companies were not a target of the cyberattack. FromSoftware can continue celebrating the release of the best DLC ever made.
Kadokawa has confirmed that they do not retain any credit card information from customers, so while they are “investigating the possibility of information leakage with the support of external professional organizations,” no customer financial data is at risk, which should be a relief for many. They have not confirmed what information (such as player data or user data) might have been stolen by the attackers.
Featured image credit: generated by Ideogram
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