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Indie game marketplace Itch.io goes down as it claims Funko Pop company used 'AI-powered' brand protection to create 'some bogus phishing report'

Indie game platform Itch.io experienced a bizarre outage due to a bogus phishing report generated by Funko's brand protection software, BrandShield, causing their registrar to disable the domain; the site is now back online.

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Indie game distribution site Itch.io has been offline today, and it has a truly bizarre reason as to why.

Itch.io might not be as huge a platform as Steam, but it's a major cornerstone of the indie gaming community, as it gives devs a place to distribute and sell their games, host game jams, and give players a chance to find new gems and play some of the best indie games. Today, though, users might have had some trouble accessing it at all, and Itch.io alleges that it's the result of collectible manufacturing company Funko (of Funko Pop fame) and a "bogus phishing report."

"I kid you not, Itch.io has been taken down by [Funko] because they use some trash 'AI-Powered' Brand Protection Software called BrandShield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain," a post from Itch.io's Twitter account claims. "I hope you are all having a nice Sunday evening."

I kid you not, @itchio has been taken down by @OriginalFunko because they use some trash "AI Powered" Brand Protection Software called @BrandShieldltd that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, @iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domainDecember 9, 2024

Continuing, Itch.io alleges that it immediately took action against the "disputed page" by taking it down "as soon as we got the notice because it's not worth fighting stuff like that. Regardless, our registrar's automated system likely kicked to disable the domain since no one read our confirmation of removal."

But what happens now? Around an hour ago, the site followed up on the situation to say it's "probably going to wait this one out," noting: "We considered putting up a new domain but there are implications with third-party services that make it not a trivial swap."

Even so, it added that if the downtime ends up lasting more than eight hours, "we'll likely prioritize deploying a new domain." Right now, the site appears to be live again, although this hasn't yet been acknowledged on its official social media pages, so it's not clear if the situation is fully resolved yet. 

Be sure to check out our roundup of upcoming indie games to see what new gems are on the horizon.