The website of Koei Tecmo's European branch has been hit by a cyber attack, prompting the company to shut down both its U.S. and European websites. In a statement, Koei Tecmo said that approximately 65,000 accounts on its European forums may have been compromised and that user registration information, including account names, encrypted passwords, and e-mail addresses, may have been stolen. This information may have been compromised as of December 25. [At this time, Koei Tecmo believes that no credit card information or other important information has been stolen. However, anyone with a Koei Tecmo account in Europe should change the login for any accounts using similar usernames or email addresses.

Koei Tecmo websites in North America and Europe are offline due to the risk of further attacks, the company said in a press statement. The attack was first reported by information security site Bleeping Computer, which also reported that the information had already been sold through hacking forums.

Koei Tecmo has developed and released such series as Atelier, Musou, Dead or Alive, and Sangokushi. The company is also known as a publisher of games based on popular anime such as "Shinkage no Kyojin" and "FAIRY TAIL".

This is the second hack of a video game company in recent months, following an attack on Capcom's servers in November that compromised not only a large amount of user data, but also corporate information and information about upcoming games.

Update: An earlier version of this article contained errors in the initial reporting of the hack and the hackers' statement.