Itch.io – a fantastic website and a haven for indie games and indie game developers – has been acquired by Funko. That's right, according to a statement posted by Itch.io staff on the platform's official Twitter, the company behind Funko Pops sent a phishing report to the Itch.io registrar, taking the entire site offline.
This happened early this morning. Itchi.io’s social media statement read: “I kid you not, Itchio has been removed from Original Funko because they used some crap “AI powered” brand protection software called Brand Shield LTD, which tricked our The registrar created some fake phishing reports, @iwantmyname, who ignored our response and simply disabled the domain.”
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The statement continued, “Additionally, in the interest of transparency, we “did” remove the disputed page as soon as we were notified because it's not worth fighting something like this. Regardless, our registrar's automated systems may disable it. Domain name, because no one is doing this. Please read our deletion confirmation.” It then stated that if the downtime lasts longer than 8 hours, new domains will be deployed first. At the time of writing this article, it only took about two hours.
This is a bad situation and hopefully the itch.io team will be able to resolve it soon. Itch.io is that rare site where one can actually find interesting, and sometimes counter-cultural, video games. It's a real hub for people to develop games without having to worry about being swallowed up by the Steam store.
So why not check it out once Itch.io is back! You might find some really cool stuff there. That's what websites are for! As today proved, cool sites like Itch.io can disappear from the modern internet in one morning, so make the most of them while you can.
