Update: itch.io back online after “bogus phishing report” takedown by Funko

thesixthaxis.com:

Update 11AM 09/12 – It looks like itch.io is back online, hopefully for good.

The original story follows.

Popular indie game marketplace itch.io has been taken offline, the company blaming “bogus phishing reports” submitted AI brand protection used by Funko. Yeah. The plastic toys company…

Taking to social media, the company explains:

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. […]

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.

This is potentially a major headache for all the developers who rely on the platform. While itch.io is often a compliment to hosting and selling games on Steam in particular, it also has other opportunities that Steam doesn’t necessarily accommodate – it can host game jams, it’s great for prototyping and it’s DRM free.

Hopefully this is able to be resolved quickly, though itch.io say they will try to get a new domain if downtime lasts longer than 8 hours.

We’re probably going to wait this one out. We considered putting up a new domain but there are implications with third party services that make it not a trivial swap. In the meantime, if you know how to tweak your hosts file use: 45.33.107.166

It’s a situation that highlights the flaws of both “AI powered” automation and online copyright claims, which can often be used indiscriminately or extra-judiciously by large companies to take down things they don’t like, whether they have an actual case or not. Adding AI to the mix without human hands as a check and balance doesn’t exactly help the situation…

Source: itch.io twitter