An EA Studio's Forums Were Hacked In 2013; Publisher "Suppressed This Information" For a Year

Australian studio EA Firemonkeys had its forums taken down in September last year as a result of a hack which saw the "information of over 40,000 members (including names, and email addresses) downloaded and stolen", a Reddit user has alleged in a post.

According to the Reddit post, publisher EA "suppressed this information." Kotaku Australia has since reported that at the time, EA announced that the forum was "being taken down for temporary maintenance." However, no mention was made of any data breach, or that personal information had potentially been compromised.

While the Reddit post claims that the "information of over 40,000 members (including names, and email addresses) was downloaded and stolen," an EA representative has confirmed in a statement sent to GameSpot that an investigation found that "a small number of customer email addresses were potentially obtained, but revealed no evidence of other information being accessed including passwords, names, security questions, payment information or any other sensitive data that could permit access to an online account."

"EA Firemonkeys became aware of a cyber attack on a stand-alone Firemonkeys forum in September 2013. Firemonkeys took immediate action by shutting down the forums and taking the server in question offline to prevent potential misuse... to be clear, no EA systems or databases were affected outside of the singular Firemonkeys forum," the statement read.

EA Firemonkeys was formed in 2012, when developers Firemint and Iron Monkey merged to form a new studio. The studio has worked on the Real Racing series, as well as mobile versions of Mass Effect, The Sims, Mirror's Edge, and Dead Space.