Tom Phillips
Guest
A year on from the infamous "Teraleak," further data hacked from the servers of Pokémon developer Game Freak has spread online — this time focused on the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
The content includes screenshots and gameplay videos that appear to show work-in-progress beta builds of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, including various features, mechanics and mini-games that fans say are not present in the final game.
The release of further data from the Teraleak, just days before the official launch of Pokémon Legends: Z-A for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, is particularly eye-opening — as the suggestion here is that hackers held these files back from last year's deluge of details until the franchise's new game was (nearly) released. It also suggests that Nintendo's attempts at locating the hackers have not been successful — despite an legal bid by the company to subpoena Discord to divulge the hackers' identity in April this year.
Today's release of hacked Pokémon Legends: Z-A information comes after days of leaks from players with early copies — legitimate and not — that have laid the new game's Pokédex bare, including a long list of fresh Mega Pokémon species. Last week, IGN warned that the floodgates had opened on spoilers. As of today, fans reckon they've compiled a list of every Pokémon getting a Mega Evolution not just in the base game, but also in Legends: Z-A's post-launch DLC, which is already available to pre-order.
With the game's biggest secrets now available to view online for those who wish to go find them, it seems like the Teraleak hackers have decided now is the time to release what they have had on Pokémon Legends: Z-A — and it looks like they're not stopping there.
The Teraleak hackers have also now begun to release information they say relates to Pokémon's fabled upcoming "Gen 10" games, which fans widely expect to arrive in 2026 in time for the franchise's 30th anniversary. But as claims of these games' names and settings swirl, it's worth pointing out that this information appears to rely on documentation that's several years' old — rather than actual gameplay footage, as is the case for Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
In October 2024, Game Freak issued a statement confirming the company had suffered a data breach in August of that year, and noted that hackers had accessed the details of current and former employees. The company did not, however, comment on the spread of hacked game data taken from its servers. This included source code for numerous Pokémon games, unused assets that revealed scrapped Pokémon species, internal meeting notes and PowerPoint presentations, and more.
Dubbed the Teraleak by Pokémon fans, the hack rekindled memories of the infamous Nintendo "Gigaleak" of 2020, the largest leak of internal video game information ever released, which revealed previously unknown canceled games, prototypes, source code, development tools, and internal communications.
IGN has contacted Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for comment.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social