Effects of the Next Day: Pokémon Leak Reveals Information on Future Games, Beta Designs, and More.
The main news this morning is as follows: cybercriminals caused robot vacuums to randomly shout racial slurs; there are also questions about interest in a huge Redbox machine; and Steam has an important message for gamers.
Game Freak, the developer of Pokémon, has confirmed that its servers were compromised in August. This security incident allowed internal materials, ranging from source codes to discarded character designs, to begin circulating on social media over the weekend. The leaked documents and images flooded platforms like Reddit and X after Centro Leaks started publishing the content on Saturday afternoon.
The leaked information includes purported source codes from previous games, codenames for the Switch 2 console, and upcoming Pokémon games from Generation 10. Additionally, there were mentions of a possible Pokémon MMO, as well as future movies and a new anime series. This leak revealed a substantial amount of beta character designs and concept art.
On another note, there have been reports of incidents where robotic vacuum cleaners were hacked, allowing attackers to take full control of the units. The hackers managed to use the devices' speakers to launch racial slurs and abusive comments at those nearby. Specifically, this involved the Ecovacs Deebot X2s, which are known for their ease of vulnerability. The company has stated that it is already working on a patch to fix the security flaw, though it will not be available until November.
Furthermore, it has been announced that Redbox, while no longer operating as it once did, has 23,000 machines distributed across malls and stores in the country that need to be removed. These machines are heavy and difficult to move, resulting in a cost of approximately $500 per kiosk. Some of these units are even embedded in concrete. Despite their obsolescence, some fans have embraced these machines that consume large amounts of energy. Walgreens mentioned that it costs them $184,000 a month to maintain 5,400 operational kiosks, a considerable expense compared to the $2 billion in revenue the company generated a decade ago.
