EA is one of the largest games companies in the world. It counts major series such as Battlefield, Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, The Sims, and Titanfall among the titles it develops or publishes - as well as a vast array of annual sports games. The major game publisher has claimed that hackers have stolen a trove of valuable information from them.
News of the hack was first reported by Vice who claimed that over 780GB of data was stolen by hackers. The attackers claimed to have downloaded source code for games such as FIFA 21 and for the proprietary Frostbite game engine used as the base for a plethora of other triple A games.
The good news is that EA claims to have not lost any customer information in this breach. "We are investigating a recent incident of intrusion into our network where a limited amount of game source code and related tools were stolen," an EA spokesperson said in a statement. "No player data was accessed, and we have no reason to believe there is any risk to player privacy," she added.
Source code is a version of computer software which is usually much easier to read and understand than the end version in a finished product, and could be used to reverse engineer portions of the product.
For example, the Frostbite engine, which hackers claim to have the source code for, is a powerful game creation tool used in dozens of games, from FIFA to the Battlefield series and several recent Star Wars games from EA.
The source code for the engine could hold significant value for an unscrupulous developer willing to copy it, or for those making cheat codes and hacks for games. But it is unlikely that any mainstream competitor to EA would ever use such stolen data.