Funko, the company behind Funko Pops, have seemingly falsely flagged indie video game platform Itch.io with a phishing report which has caused it to be taken down. The website’s domain was disabled in the late hours of Sunday evening (Dec. 8), with itch.io’s social media posting about the takedown this morning (Dec. 9).
According to itch.io, Funko utilized an AI-powered brand protection software known as Brand Shield to create a false phishing report against the website. In response, itch.io’s registrar, iwantmyname, a domain registration company, disabled the itch.io’s domain, causing the website to be inaccessible.
Image Credit: Itch.io
Itch.io Domain Taken Down After AI-Generated Phishing Report By Funko
Itch.io is one of the largest hosts of indie games on the internet, but also hosts indie traditional role playing games, game assets, comics, zines, music, art, and more. As of November 2024, the platform hosted over 1,000,000 products, including around 200,000 games, and hundreds of thousands of other independent creations.
The website allows creators to charge variable pricing, or and give their games away for free or for donations. Beyond this, the game has hosted dozens of charity game bundles, including the 2022 Bundle for Ukraine, and the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality in June 2020.
Funko creates collectables based on popular IPs. Image Credit: Funko
Funko is an international toy and game company who create Funko Pops, licenced collectables of popular media assets, including Star Wars, Marvel, Lord of the Rings, and hundreds more. Funko Pops have been compared to Beanie Babies and other collectible trends. They’ve also been widely criticized as ugly, impersonal, a detriment to the intellectual property they represent – turning something unique and creative into something uniform and soulless.
BrandShield is an AI and “big-data based” technology company that monitors online threats to brand integrity. These types of companies have sometimes faced criticism for turning legal mechanisms into instruments of copyright trolling and false accusations. Disputing these accusations can often require huge amounts of work and potentially legal proceedings.
Itch.io had responded to the phishing report by taking down the ‘disputed’ page, because in the site’s words “t’s not worth fighting stuff like that.” However, iwantmyname’s automated system seemingly disabled the domain anyway.
At the time of writing itch.io was still down. Stick with Esports.net for more Gaming news.