The popular online free MMORPG MapleStory has been hacked, exposing 13 million South Korean players. Nexon?s popular game stores the player?s user ID, name, password and Residential Registration Numbers (the equivalent of Social Security Numbers in the west), all of which were possibly compromised by the hackers.
Companies like Sony, Bethesda and Steam have also been hacked recently, making player security a more pressing issue than ever, but MapleStory?s hack is one of a scale that we simply haven?t previously seen. While it?s entirely possible that hackers were interested only in the character information housed on the top MMO?s servers, the personal information to which they have access could cause dramatic problems for anyone with a compromised identity.
The bottom line is that developers are simply not doing enough to protect consumer information, and in a world where nearly every games company has your credit card information, it?s time to start getting serious. If game developers are unable to keep information safe and private, customers are eventually going to stop trusting them with their personal information. In the meantime, MapleStory is braced for the results of the hack.