As a seasoned gamer and long-time supporter of indie game development, I find myself disheartened by the recent turn of events involving itch.io, a platform that has been instrumental in fostering creativity and innovation within the gaming community. The sudden takedown of their domain by Funko, allegedly due to an overzealous AI-powered Brand Protection Software, has left many of us in limbo.
Itch.io, an open marketplace for indie games, has temporarily gone offline due to action taken by Funko. Funko’s AI-driven Brandshield IP protection software apparently triggered a false phishing alert to itch.io’s domain registrar iwantmyname. The company confirmed the outage on their social media channels such as X.
Without a doubt, @itchio has been shut down by @OriginalFunko, owing to their aggressive “AI-Powered” Brand Protection Software, @BrandShieldltd. This software apparently fabricated a phishing alert, which our registrar, @iwantmyname, failed to address properly, leading to the deactivation of the domain without further communication.
— itch.io (@itchio) December 9, 2024
Here’s a full transcript of the tweet thread:
Without a doubt, @itchio has been shut down by @OriginalFunko, allegedly due to their use of an “AI-powered” Brand Protection tool, @BrandShieldltd, which apparently generated a false Phishing alert to our domain registrar, @iwantmyname. Unfortunately, they disregarded our explanation and simply deactivated the domain instead.
I hope you are all having a nice Sunday evening
Furthermore, for clarity, we promptly removed the contentious page upon receiving the notification, as it was unnecessary to engage in such disputes. However, it appears that our domain may have been suspended by our registrar’s automated system due to lack of acknowledgement of the removal confirmation.
It seems we might decide to hold off on this change for now. We thought about transitioning to a new website address, but there are complications with external services that make it more than just a simple switch. In the interim, if you’re familiar with editing your hosts file, you can use the following: 45.33.107.166 as an alternative.
— itch.io (@itchio) December 9, 2024
Itch.io has confirmed via a response on X that their servers remain operational, but the website is currently unavailable. We’re hoping the team will manage to restore normal service soon. So far, they seem to have followed all the usual procedures expected of a platform this size, and we’ll see more clearly if this is the case once someone checks it out. They mentioned in their latest update that if the downtime continues for over 8 hours, they might deploy a new domain. Fingers crossed that the issue gets resolved before then. In the meantime, keep an eye on itch.io’s updates through X for further information.
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2024-12-09 12:27