Player information swiped in hack of Ubisoft system

Videogame titan Ubisoft on Tuesday warned that hackers swiped names, email addresses and other information about users of its online gaming community.

"We recently found that one of our websites was exploited to gain unauthorized access to some of our online systems," the France-based company said in a message to members of its Uplay service.

"We learned that data had been illegally accessed from our account database, including user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords."

Ubisoft said that it sealed the breach to its system and that no credit card or other payment information was stolen because there was none kept in the computer system.

Ubisoft urged players to change their passwords.

"This is pretty serious," a Uplay member wrote in an online forum beneath the blog post about the cyber strike. "Thanks for being up front about it."

Hit Ubisoft franchises include 'Assassin's Creed' and military espionage games inspired by spy novel author Tom Clancy.

Ubisoft did not disclose how many accounts were involved.

"Ubisoft's security teams are exploring all available means to expand and strengthen our security measures in order to better protect our customers," the company said in an online question-and-answer forum.

"Unfortunately, no company or organization is completely immune to these kinds of criminal attacks."