After alleged assets for the next Persona game were leaked online, Sega, Atlus, and P-Studio have officially addressed the recent hack. Persona developer P-Studio posted a statement online, confirming that “an unauthorized third-party” breached its servers and stole in-development footage of the game, which is widely believed to be Persona 6.
“We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third-party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Persona title,” P-Studio wrote. “At this time, we do not anticipate any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects. We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way. Our work on the next Persona game will continue as planned, and we remain as committed as ever to delivering an experience to you, our players, that truly exceeds your expectations. We will update everyone again soon and, of course, will properly introduce you to this next game when it is ready.”
The leaks originally surfaced on Chinese forums and the country’s popular social media site Rednote, with the material then being reposted online globally. The content showed off what appears to be promotional images for the game, and a list of names–as well as details on a potential new mascot–were also pulled from the pilfered assets.
For Persona fans, the wait for a new mainline game has been incredibly long. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the franchise, as well as the 10th anniversary of the previous main entry in the series, Persona 5. The game that helped the franchise reach new levels of global popularity, Persona has expanded since then with an overhauled version of Persona 5, a remake of Persona 3, a remake of Persona 4 is in development, several spin-off games have been released, and there have been collaborations with other games.
Between all the work on Persona, Atlus has also released several more critically acclaimed titles, like Metaphor ReFantazio and Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. As for when Sega and Atlus will formally reveal the next Persona game, that remains to be seen. Atlus is currently celebrating 30 years of Persona, and the reveal of the next Persona as a way to cap off the celebrations would be the ideal time to formally announce the game.
