Square Enix site hacked

Membership might not have its privileges after all. Square Enix has temporarily shut down its North American and Japanese Square Enix Members sites in the wake of a possible hack.

"We have reason to believe that unknown parties may have gained unauthorized access to a particular Square Enix server related to the free Square Enix Members service offered in North America and Japan," according to a note from the publisher.

"We are assessing the full extent of this potential breach to determine what data, if any, was compromised and will provide more details as soon as possible. While some personal information may have been accessed, we can confirm that there is no possibility of any credit card information leak from this incident, since the server in question stores no credit card information."

In addition to the site (which serves as a blog for the publisher's products and gathering place for fans), Square Enix Members is a loyalty program where customers who register their games with the site can earn a variety of rewards. Past rewards have included special postcards, a messenger bag, and an engraved 8GB iPod Touch.

Square Enix apologized for the inconvenience and said the site should resume operations in a few days.

If Square Enix has been the victim of hackers, at least the Final Fantasy publisher has plenty of company. Beyond Sony's massive PlayStation Network breach, game makers including Nintendo, BioWare, Eidos Montreal, Bethesda Softworks, and Epic Games have all had their sites hacked this year alone.