What was temporary maintenance for the forum of EA Firemonkeys, an Australian studio, which resulted in it being taken down actually turned out to be a hacking incident where members’ information was stolen. This is according to a recent Reddit post which alleged that “information of over 40,000 members (including names, and email addresses) downloaded and stolen” and that EA had “suppressed this information.”

An EA representative recently told GameSpot however that, “a small number of customer email addresses were potentially obtained, but revealed no evidence of other information being accessed including passwords, names, security questions, payment information or any other sensitive data that could permit access to an online account.

EA Firemonkeys became aware of a cyber attack on a stand-alone Firemonkeys forum in September 2013. Firemonkeys took immediate action by shutting down the forums and taking the server in question offline to prevent potential misuse… to be clear, no EA systems or databases were affected outside of the singular Firemonkeys forum.”

It’s an interesting way to frame it all (“potentially obtained”) but there’s no denying that EA needs to up its security and be more transparent with its audience. Your thoughts? Let us know below.