Sometime in the early hours of September 9, 2026, Exophase started doing something it normally never does: indexing games that don't exist yet. The achievement-tracking site, which monitors Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and several other platforms, suddenly began pulling in hundreds of entries for unreleased titles. Some of those titles had never been announced. The cause appears to be a Valve API error that briefly made private achievement data publicly accessible, allowing Exophase to automatically scan and catalogue it.
Exophase owner Mike Bendel (known on ResetEra as x3sphere) confirmed the situation directly, stating that games with achievements that should have been private became accessible through the API, and that the site's automated scanning picked them up. Bendel noted the unusual volume of entries appearing with only AppIDs instead of proper names, which is what flagged the issue.
Here's the thing: this isn't a targeted hack or a deliberate data dump. It looks like a straightforward infrastructure slip on Valve's end. The consequences, though, are anything but small.
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What got exposed and why it matters to players
The sheer volume of games in the leak is hard to overstate. Dozens of titles appeared, ranging from long-rumored projects to games nobody had any idea were in development. For players, this is the equivalent of someone accidentally leaving the entire Christmas shopping list on the kitchen table.
Among the already-announced titles caught in the leak are Gears of War: E-Day, Judas, Control Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and Horizon Hunters Gathering. For those games, the damage is mostly spoiler-related. Achievement lists often describe story beats, boss encounters, and late-game mechanics in enough detail to ruin surprises. If you're planning a blind playthrough of any of those, you'll want to avoid digging into the Exophase entries.
The unannounced games are where things get genuinely interesting. The full list of titles spotted in the leak includes:
- Persona 6 (reportedly 48 achievements, with details about locations, activities, and gameplay systems)
- Kingdom Hearts IV (achievements apparently hint at specific Disney worlds, including what looks like a Star Wars connection)
- Deus Ex Remaster
- Minecraft Dungeons 2
- Tropico 7
- Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3
- Metro 2039
- Lords of the Fallen II
- ACE COMBAT 8
- Attack on Titan 3
- Kena: Scars of Kosmora
- Professor Layton and the New World of Steam
- Turok Origins
- Trine 6: Together in Time
- Tales of Eternia Remastered
- Fate/Extra Record
- Final Fantasy Resonance
- Mega Man Dual Override
- Squadron 42
- Star Wars Galactic Racers
- Witchbrook
- Persona 4 Revival
Beyond those, there are entries for projects that remain completely unconfirmed by name, including an unannounced Avengers game, a Sea of Thieves sequel or spin-off, a Balatro follow-up, a new Sonic title, a Slime Rancher game, a Dune game, a new Stellaris project, two unannounced Warhammer games, a Nickelodeon life-sim described as Animal Crossing-adjacent, a Walking Dead collection, a Shrek 2 remaster or related project, and a Twin Peaks game.
The games generating the most noise right now
Persona 6 is the one everyone is talking about. The game has 48 achievements in the leak, and the descriptions reportedly give away enough about activities, locations, and systems to paint a rough picture of what Atlus has been building. Given that Persona 6 has had no official announcement window, seeing 48 fully written achievements is a significant amount of accidental disclosure.
Kingdom Hearts IV is another major one, and it's already spawned its own thread of analysis. The achievement descriptions apparently reference specific Disney worlds, with what looks like a Star Wars world generating particular attention. For a series that has always used Disney IP as its backbone, any hints about which worlds made the cut are exactly the kind of thing Square Enix would have wanted to control the reveal on.
The Twin Peaks entry is the strangest item on the list. It currently has only 2 achievements: one that appears to be a test achievement, and one for reaching the Double R Diner. That's thin enough to suggest it could be a very early prototype, a cancelled project, or something entirely unrelated to a full game release. Still, a Twin Peaks game of any kind is the kind of thing that gets people talking.
What most players miss in leaks like this is that achievement data appearing in Steam's backend doesn't confirm a release is coming. Games get cancelled after years of development. Placeholder entries get created for projects that never ship. The achievement lists here are real, but the games they belong to exist somewhere on a spectrum from "shipping next year" to "quietly shelved three months ago."
How achievement tracking sites fit into this
Exophase is a legitimate platform that tracks completions and rare achievements across multiple storefronts. It works by scanning publicly accessible API data, which is exactly what it did here. The site didn't do anything wrong. Valve's API exposed data it shouldn't have, and Exophase's automated systems picked it up before anyone could close the door.
This kind of leak is different from a targeted breach or a deliberate insider dump. It's more like a filing cabinet left unlocked in a public hallway. The information wasn't stolen; it was just visible to anyone who walked past.
For players who hunt achievements, this also creates an interesting side effect. Guides for games that technically don't exist yet are already being drafted. If you're the type who likes to have a roadmap before a game launches, the data is out there, though the risk of it being incomplete or changed before release is real. For games like Tides of Tomorrow, having a solid achievement guide before you start can make a big difference, and that same logic will apply to any of these leaked titles once they actually ship.
Some of the more niche entries in the leak are already getting dedicated breakdowns. Atomic Heart's DLC content, for example, shows how achievement lists can reveal far more than developers intend, right down to collectible counts and missable secrets. The Atomic Heart Blood on Crystal achievements guide is a good example of how quickly that kind of data gets structured into something useful once it's public.
What happens next
Valve has not issued a public statement about the API exposure. Whether the window has been closed or whether more data is still accessible isn't confirmed. Exophase has the entries indexed, and that information is already spreading across forums, social media, and gaming communities faster than any takedown request could realistically contain.
For the studios affected, the situation is frustrating but not necessarily damaging in a permanent way. A leaked achievement list is not a leaked build. Story spoilers are real, but controlled reveals are still possible for the big announcements. Atlus can still do a proper Persona 6 reveal. Square Enix can still build a Kingdom Hearts IV trailer around the Disney world reveals that got exposed here.
The more interesting question is what this tells us about Steam's backend security for unannounced projects. Developers trust Valve to keep private data private, and that trust took a hit today. For any studio currently sitting on an unannounced game with Steam achievements already written, this is the kind of incident that prompts a conversation about when to register that data in the first place.
If any of the leaked titles end up on your radar, our gaming guides will have full achievement breakdowns ready as soon as those games are officially out.
