Kadokawa Corporation and NicoNico have recently experienced a significant outage, causing their websites to be inactive for several days.
Kadokawa is a well-known Japanese media conglomerate involved in various sectors, including anime, manga, and video games. In February, they expanded their portfolio by acquiring Octopath Traveler co-developers, Acquire. NicoNico, a popular video-sharing platform operated by Dwango, is a subsidiary of Kadokawa.
The websites display a brief message stating that the downtime is due to “maintenance” of the company’s domains. However, NicoNico has revealed that it is actually a massive cyber attack, leading fans to speculate about the situation.
Kadokawa has not made any public statements regarding the issue, so we can only wait for further updates.
Another Kadokawa brand affected by the current outage is the e-commerce service ebten. Its website now displays a page informing customers that while existing orders will be fulfilled, confirmation emails cannot be sent.
The page also reassures customers that ebten does not store credit card details on its servers. The continued ability to ship products indicates that their back-office applications remain operational, suggesting that the issue lies solely with their web infrastructure.
Similarly, in 2022, Toei Animation suffered a cyber attack that disrupted the schedules of their TV anime series, including ONE PIECE, Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai and Delicious Party Precure. A follow-up report revealed that an employee had downloaded a file from an “external website,” which served as the entry point for a ransomware attack, causing production delays, it’s possible that something similar may have occurred with Kadokawa.
To protect their data, Kadokawa shut down the affected servers and initiated a thorough analysis and investigation, which is still ongoing after several days. NicoNico, Japan’s second-most-popular video-sharing website, has been greatly missed by both audiences and creators who rely on it for income.
This comes on the heels of the platform recently removing the ability to use VISA payments, following a similar move with MasterCard six months prior, reflecting ongoing issues with Western payment processors trying to dictate control over the sort of content foreign companies host.
Kadokawa is dedicated to protecting and restoring its systems, and so far, there is no confirmation of data breaches. The company has assured users that it does not store credit card information, eliminating the risk of such data being leaked.
