Pokémon developer Game Freak has suffered another huge data leak, revealing the studio’s alleged planned projects through 2030.
The leak comes a year to the day after a “teraleak” of “important internal data” revealed unannounced Pokémon games. Game Freak later admitted that it had been hacked, admitting that personal employee information had been obtained. Then, in April of this year, Nintendo filed a subpoena request on Discord to learn the identity of the hacker.
This new leak, revealing alleged future plans and concept art from games new and old, comes just days before the release of Pokémon Legends: ZA, amid suggestions that the same hacker was withholding this information.
The budget for Pokémon Legends: ZA is said to be only 2 billion yen (around $13 million). Typically, Japanese game development budgets are lower than what we see in the West (for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to lower staff salaries), but that still seems like a very small amount for what is considered one of Nintendo’s most important series. Additionally, as recent Pokémon games on Switch have suffered from poor performance, fans are concerned about the lack of investment to ensure future games run smoother.
On the Internet, there are notable comments on this aspect of the leak in particular. The top comment on a Reddit thread discussing the leaks simply jokes that the entire leak is “just a post-it note that says ‘even lower budget for the next game’.” Another comment reflects: “A lot of people will complain about the financial budget and not enough people will complain about the time budget of these games.” Another poster notes, “The only leak I would care about is if they suddenly got a better engine and treated Pokémon like a modern game with a high budget.”
In the leak itself, details were shared, supposedly covering the next four games planned through 2030.
Spoiler alert!
The first of these is the next mainline game, the tenth generation, which is said to be codenamed Gaia and will be known as Pokémon Wind and Waves. It is set to release next year, followed by DLC in 2027, and will take place in Southeast Asia. Leaked screenshots of concept art show open jungle areas, while budget-wise it would cost 3 billion yen – another surprisingly small budget, but coming in at around $20 million, this time a marked increase from ZA’s $13 million (likely thanks to a series of planned improvements, like a new engine, which commenters hope will improve performance on console hardware).
This would be followed by another Legends game, set in Sword and Shield’s Galar region – appropriately codenamed Ringo.
Then there’s Project Seed, which would combine several regions from previous games. Finally, the eleventh generation would aim for release in 2030.
Of course, it is worth questioning the validity of this information. Even if the reported details are true, the documents may well be out of date and plans may have changed since then. There is also a lot of fan speculation surrounding the details.
Eurogamer has contacted The Pokémon Company and Nintendo for comment on the validity of the leaks.
The news follows leaks of Pokémon Legends: ZA ahead of its release this Thursday, October 16. Copies of the game are already available, being streamed on Twitch, and illegal ROMs are already available, meaning spoilers are plentiful.
