The Japanese company admits that the data of 300 thousand users was hacked. Many of these have also suffered economic damage.
Not 160 thousand, but as many as 300 thousand Nintendo accounts were hacked in March by hackers. The first estimates of the Japanese giant of the videogames, in fact, have been widely denied (and in fact doubled) by the following check. The same Nintendo had to admit it in an official statement.
Nintendo has in fact stated that the number has increased as a result of subsequent and more thorough investigations. This admission, however, is as late as the first one was: back in March, the first users complained that their accounts had been charged for purchases made by someone else, without their authorization. Nintendo initially stated in a tweet that users would do well to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts, but didn't say why at the time. Evidently, then, already at the beginning of April the company had noticed the first strange movements but it took another two weeks before Nintendo admitted that thousands and thousands of accounts had been misused. Now comes the (maybe) definitive truth: the accounts have been hacked, the money is gone, and the problem is much bigger than initially thought.
What happened
The problem, at this point, is another: Nintendo continues to provide no information about what happened, i.e. how the accounts have been hacked. Even worse, the Japanese company claims that hackers got into the accounts with the original IDs and passwords, which would have been stolen elsewhere. Or because users allegedly used passwords that were too weak. Given the size of the "account breach", however, this hypothesis seems very unlikely.
Nintendo's version
In the latest press release issued by Nintendo, we read, once again, the company's version: "While there is no evidence that Nintendo's databases, servers or services have been breached, and while we can confirm that no credit card information has been stolen, we have taken precautionary measures to help protect our customers. We have discontinued the ability to use a Nintendo Network ID to access a Nintendo account and have contacted all customers for whom we had reason to believe their accounts were breached to help them take additional steps to protect themselves." Then Nintendo just goes back to recommending that users use strong passwords and turn on two-factor authentication. The gaming giant, then, admits no fault.