Steam Leak Reportedly Exposes Persona 6 and Kingdom Hearts 4 Achievements Among Dozens of Games
By CriticalPixel ·
A wave of unreleased achievement lists just spilled onto the public web, and two of gaming's most anticipated sequels are caught in it. Persona 6 and Kingdom Hearts 4, along with a long tail of other unannounced titles, had their Steam achievements scraped and published on the tracking site Exophase this week, according to reporting from IGN and PC Gamer. Neither Atlus nor Square Enix has commented, but the achievement lists reportedly include plot relevant spoilers for both games years before their expected release windows.
What Leaked and How
Exophase exists to catalog achievements across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox, and it normally only picks up a game's list once a publisher flips that data from private to public ahead of launch. That switch appears to have happened by accident on a mass scale this week. Exophase owner x3sphere told ResetEra that the site scanned in achievement data for games that should never have been publicly queryable through Steam's API, adding that the site does not usually see unnamed App IDs surface with achievements the way a batch of them did over roughly one hour on September 8. The read from both IGN and PC Gamer is a backend mistake on Valve's side rather than anything Exophase itself did wrong.
Persona 6 and Kingdom Hearts 4 Spoilers Are Now Public
Persona 6 is the bigger shock of the two since Atlus has barely shown anything since its reveal teaser. There is no release window and no gameplay footage yet, but Persona 6's Steam page already exists in Valve's backend, and PC Gamer says its leaked achievement list is rife with plausible spoilers for a game that has not shown a single frame of gameplay. Kingdom Hearts 4 is further along creatively, with Square Enix having already confirmed one world based on Disney's Coco at D23 in August. Kingdom Hearts 4's Steam listing is also live months ahead of launch, and fans combing its leaked achievements on Reddit believe they have identified additional worlds, including corroboration of a rumor the community had been chasing for months. Series co-director Tai Yasue and creator Tetsuya Nomura spent D23 insisting Kingdom Hearts 4 will not slip past its late 2027 launch window, so a leak this granular lands at an awkward moment for a team trying to control its own marketing rollout.
Other Games Caught in the Leak
Persona 6 and Kingdom Hearts 4 are the headline names, but they are far from alone. PC Gamer's rundown also lists Deus Ex Remastered, Horizon Hunters Gathering, and Judas among the exposed titles, while IGN separately flagged a Steam release for Capcom's 3DS game Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, an unannounced Nickelodeon game, an unannounced Telltale The Walking Dead collection, and an unannounced Tetris game. Some entries reportedly showed up under bare Steam App IDs with no public name attached yet, which is usually a sign a store listing has not gone live. PC Gamer also updated its report to note that Balatro creator localthunk had to publicly deny any connection to one leaked listing that fans had speculated was a spiritual successor to his game, an early sign of how messy speculation around an unverified leak can get.
Community Reaction
Reaction on X has been more amused than outraged so far, though it is early and thin. Replies under PC Gamer's post joked about Steam's security, with one user asking how this could happen if Steam is supposedly so secure, while others hunted for other high profile names buried in the data, including one commenter claiming Star Citizen prequel Squadron 42 also had achievements exposed. IGN's post drew a smaller but sharper response, including a reply accusing the outlet of being unprofessional for covering an unverified leak at all. With reaction still limited to a handful of scattered replies rather than a broad wave, it is too early to call this a full blown fan controversy, though the appetite to comb through the data is obvious.
The CriticalPixel Take
This is the kind of leak publishers hate most, not because it reveals a release date, but because it reveals texture. A pile of achievement names does not tell you what a game plays like, but it tells hardcore fans things a marketing team wanted to control the reveal of, from Kingdom Hearts 4 world confirmations to whatever plot beats Atlus was planning to save for a proper Persona 6 trailer. Valve has had backend slip ups before, and unnamed App IDs surfacing achievements in a tight one hour window points more toward an infrastructure bug than a targeted hack, but that distinction will not matter much to Atlus or Square Enix if this data keeps circulating on Reddit and fan wikis for months. The smart move for both publishers now is to get ahead of it with real information rather than let a leak this granular define the conversation until their next showcase.
What Happens Next
Neither Atlus nor Square Enix had issued a statement as of this week, and Valve has not addressed whether the exposure was a bug on Steam's own API or a misconfiguration in how Exophase queries that API. Expect both publishers to at least acknowledge the leak if it keeps trending, especially with Kingdom Hearts 4 still working toward a late 2027 launch and Persona 6 yet to show a single second of gameplay. Until then, treat every detail pulled from these achievement lists as unverified spoiler territory rather than confirmed plot, since Exophase itself has not vouched for the accuracy of what it scanned in.
Sources
IGN - Apparent Steam leak reveals Persona 6 and Kingdom Hearts 4 achievements
PC Gamer - Steam may have leaked achievements for countless forthcoming PC games
IGN on X - Steam leak reveals Persona 6 and Kingdom Hearts 4 achievements
PC Gamer on X - Steam may have leaked achievements for countless PC games