Epic Games forums hacked, taken offline

Gears of War, Unreal Tournament and Fortnite studio Epic has shutdown its forums after confirming they had been breached by a hacker.

Acknowledging the intrusion in an email to members of its community, Epic admitted that the incident may have resulted in unauthorised access to your username, email address, password and date of birth”.

However, not all of the forums belonging to the developer were affected. The main forum site, which covers UDK, Infinity Blade, Gears of War, Bulletstorm, and Unreal Tournament games other than the latest entry in the franchise, was hit, but the separate communities for Unreal Engine 4, Fortnite (pictured) and the new Unreal Tournament were reportedly left untouched.

Epic added that while it doesn’t collect of store financial information such as credit card details, the information stolen could be used as leverage by criminals to try and scam users. We advise you to be alert for suspicious emails such as phishing attempts,” the statement concluded.

The email (via Kotaku) can be read in full below.

Dear Epic Games Forum Member,

We have just discovered that the Epic Games forums located athttps://forums.epicgames.comwere compromised by a hacker. We are sorry to report that the incident may have resulted in unauthorized access to your username, email address, password, and the date of birth you provided at registration.

We have takenhttps://forums.epicgames.comoffline. When the site reopens, your password will be reset. If you use the same password on this site which you use on other sites, we recommend immediately changing your password on those sites as well.

The affected forum site covers UDK, Infinity Blade, Gears of War, Bulletstorm, and prior Unreal Tournament games. However, the separate forum sites covering Unreal Engine 4, Fortnite, and the new Unreal Tournament were unaffected.

We apologize for the inconvenience this causes everyone. To further understand what’s happened and prevent it in the future, we’re working with a computer security firm to identify the nature of the compromise. We will report further information on the forums when they reopen.

While the investigation into the security compromise is ongoing, we are reaching out to you directly to let you know of the potential unauthorized access to information you provided at registration. It is possible that any information stored or sent by you using the forums may have been accessed. Since this is a public forum, we do not collect or maintain financial information, but we advise you to be alert for suspicious email such as phishing attempts.

Thank you for being a part of our community, and for your attention to this issue.

Best Regards,

The Epic Games Team