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The story
Since around late September, suspicious behavior has reportedly been detected in the official PC launcher for ‘NIKKE,’ according to information that became a hot topic on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board. The original poster even shared step-by-step instructions for an initial check — looking for a specific string inside a specific file — raising the possibility of a data leak. The thread further noted concerns that the issue could spread to other titles using the same Tencent-affiliated servers, splitting reactions over ‘how much of this is actually true’ and ‘the trustworthiness of PC mobile games in general.’
What people said
What's really scary is that when you go back through everything that's already been posted:
① The problem started around late September
Umarabo
@UMADOGLabo
Can't fit it all due to the character limit, but here's what to do as a first step:
Not on PC ⇒ you're fine, move along
On PC ⇒ open the NIKKE folder
⇒ open Launcher
⇒ open intl_service
⇒ open the debug memo text file
⇒ press Ctrl+F on your keyboard
⇒ search for 'k2f_chan' ⇒ not found ⇒ you're fine
⇒ found it ⇒ a thief may have gotten in, grabbed your data, and left
Agare
@AgareHell
This isn't just a 'NIKKE' thing — the same applies to other games tied to Tencent's servers.
For example — Delta Force, Arena Breakout Infinite, PUBG Mobile, and so on!!
Whoa…
The PC version is basically done for
Tencent?
Pokémon Unite is finished (オワタ, 5ch slang for 'it's over')
Don't they even pay compensation for something like this?
Is NIKKE even on that?
Why is that, I wonder…
Sorry, I just wrote that off the top of my head — guess it's not a thing lol
That's probably why people are saying it might not be limited to NIKKE.
Nah, honestly everything's sketchy at this point.
There was that case where a free Steam game had something hidden in it, for instance.
Makes Epic's weekly free games kind of scary too, once you think about it this way.
Better to stick to big-name titles only —
with no-name games, you can't even tell if a virus got slipped in.
Guess we're entering an age where it's safer not to connect your game console to the internet lol
Guess we didn't need AI after all
Consoles aren't exactly safe from this either, you know
This kind of outcome was only natural.
Did nobody learn anything from Genshin Impact?
Did something happen with Genshin Impact?
Really shows you who's always out there trashing other countries' mobile games.
This is seriously bad, right?
The world's gonna end because of AI
This is a software company tied to a country where handing data over to the state is basically mandatory by law, you know?
Apparently you can even get infected just from Steam's wallpaper display feature, so anyone using Steam isn't exactly in the clear either.
PlayStation isn't exempt either (プルステ, shorthand slang for PlayStation)
only consoles survived
Consoles aren't exactly safe either, though —
if something gets slipped in, it'd actually be harder to notice than on PC
Guess I'm part of the remaining 1% since I just made an account and never touched it again
This isn't even about Steam —
wait, do you think all PC games run through Steam or something?
Blue Archive, Stella Sora, Blue Protocol
Pretty much every big name does this — guess this is just how it is, huh
So this one's risky too, huh
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
NIKKE is developed by Shift Up, with Tencent-affiliated entities involved in its overseas distribution, and Chinese-capital games using similar launchers have previously drawn attention over suspected communication and data-collection issues. What split opinion in the thread was the question of ‘how much of this is actually confirmed fact’ — the specific behavior of the malware and the scope of the damage have not been disclosed in detail by any official source, and the only primary information pointing to an actual infection method came from posts >>1 through >>3. The concerns about this spreading to PUBG Mobile or Pokémon Unite, as well as the references to the past Genshin Impact case, are all based on individual posters’ memories or hearsay and were never verified within the thread itself. The launcher mechanism requiring administrator privileges is, in itself, something shared with other popular titles like Blue Archive, and the fact that two games use the same kind of mechanism doesn’t necessarily mean they share the same vulnerability — a distinction readers can easily miss. The mention of malware delivered via Steam’s wallpaper feature is also a separate, previously known threat unrelated to the NIKKE case, and it only got folded into the conversation because the thread’s discussion happened to drift that way.
*This article is an excerpt and summary based on the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “The malware planted in the NIKKE PC launcher is seriously bad, but barely anyone’s talking about it.”
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