Nintendo Switch Hack Nearly Twice As Bad As First Reported

Crisis communications experts always advise victims to not provide an initial estimate of impacted households or users because the number is always far greater. Such is the case with Nintendo, which admitted Tuesday that 300,000 of the Nintendo Switch accounts were hacked, not the 160,000 initially reported in April.

Nintendo revised the impacted accounts in a June 9 statement written in Japanese language on its Japanese website, but made no mention of the hack at all – either then or now – on its U.S. site, thus violating another crisis tenet, the need to be transparent if stakeholders are affected, nor did the video game company indicate where the user accounts resided.

However, Nintendo stated it is nearly finished refunding customers whose accounts were hacked. The company added it learned of the newly discovered hacked accounts as its investigation continued.

Only a “small fraction” of the breached accounts were used to make fraudulent purchases.  According to CNN, social media users reported in April about money missing from their Nintendo accounts, and in some cases, unauthorized purchases were made for Fortnite’s virtual currency, V-Bucks.

The company also stated that it is now taking additional security measures.