Late yesterday, Crytpic Studios, the folks behind Champions Online and Star Trek Online, sent an e-mail out to their subscribers to inform them of a troubling discovery: an “unauthorized party” may have compromised the studio’s security.

Said the e-mail:

“As a result of routine security checks and upgrades, we have discovered that certain of your account information, including your password, may have been accessed by an unauthorized party.”

Cryptic went ahead and reset affected customers’ passwords. They also posted a more in-depth explanation of what they think happened on their website, saying that the hack happened way back in December 2010, and that the “unauthorized access included user account names, handles, and encrypted passwords for those accounts. Even though the passwords were encrypted, it is apparent that the intruder has been able to crack some portion of the passwords in this database. All accounts that we believe were present in the database have had the passwords reset, and customers registered to these accounts have been notified via e-mail of this incident.”

The company’s investigation is continuing, and they’ve reminded subscribers that they’ll never ask for credit card information, social security number, or passwords via e-mail (no duh). In addition, they note that they haven’t uncovered any evidence that the information’s been used as a result of the hack.

Spooky stuff, no? An intrusion of security that’s about a year and a half old, that we never knew about…and no apparent evidence of that information being used. Anyone out there have a story about getting scammed? Anyone have suspicions out there?

If your “running around in spanex” fund is looking a little sad these days, rejoice that Champions Online is following in the footsteps of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online by changing its service to free to play. Champions will now offer two subscription packages. Gold subscribers are the same as paid subscribers before, and will receive ”full access to new content, Adventure Packs, powers and so on.”

Silver players will have access to most of the game’s content, but have options to buy additional access a la carte as they progress. Sounds fairly standard to me. The free to play beta will start on November 9, while the full free to play initiative will officially start in Q1 2011. Hit this posted Q&A for other details surrounding the program.