Indie game haven itch.io taken down by Funko Pop and its “trash ‘AI Powered’ Brand Protection Software” according to itch staff

Itch.io – a brilliant website and haven for indie games and indie game develoeprs – has been taken down by none other than Funko. That’s right, according to a statement made by Itch.io staff on the platform’s official Twitter, the company behind Funko Pops issued an phishing report to the Itch.io registrar which resulted in the entire site going offline.

This happened in the early hours of this morning. The social media statement by Itchi.io reads, “I kid you not, Itchio has been taken down by Original Funko because they use some trash “AI Powered” Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield LTD that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, @iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain.”

The statement continues, “Also, for transparency, we *did* take the disputed page 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.” It later stated that if the downtime exceeds 8 hours, the deployment of a new domain would be prioritized. As of writing, it’s only been around two hours.

This is a rancid situation all around, and hopefully the itch.io team can get this resolved in short order. Itch.io is a rare website where folks are able to genuinely find intriguing, sometimes counter-culture, video games. A real hub for people to approach game development without having to worry about getting swallowed up by the Steam store.

So once Itch.io comes back, why not give it a look! You might find something really cool there. That’s what the website is for! As today has proven, cool places like Itch.io can just vanish one morning on the modern internet, so make the most of them while you can.