You would assume that a company as big as EA would have invested a lot of money and resources into developing a system that would protect its IPs from being stolen. There’s a good chance that they might have, but at the same time, it seems that hackers have also come a long way in terms of skill and tools because a bunch of EA’s IPs have been stolen.
In the initial report from Motherboard, it appears that hackers have managed to break into EA’s systems and made off with 780GB worth of data belonging to the publisher. This includes source code for games such as FIFA 21 and the company’s proprietary Frostbite engine which is used to power a bunch of EA games like Battlefield.
In a statement made to Motherboard, an EA spokesperson said, “We are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen. No player data was accessed, and we have no reason to believe there is any risk to player privacy.” The company says that they’ve also made improvements to security and do not expect that this will have an impact on their business.
Not too long ago, developer CD Projekt was also hacked and where source code for games like Cyberpunk 2077 were stolen. The hackers had demanded a ransom from the company, but it seems that CD Projekt refused as it later reported that Cyberpunk 2077’s source code had been auctioned off.