In a bizarre and troubling turn of events, the beloved indie game platform itch.io has found itself the unintended target of Funko’s brand protection efforts. According to a post from itch.io's official BlueSky account, Funko—a company best known for its ubiquitous Funko Pop collectibles—utilized an "AI-powered" brand protection software called Brand Shield. The software allegedly flagged itch.io’s domain as a phishing threat, prompting the domain registrar, iwantmyname, to disable itch.io’s domain without further investigation.

This chain of events has sparked widespread concern among creators and developers who rely on itch.io to distribute and sell their games. The issue highlights the growing dangers of automated brand protection tools that lack oversight and accuracy. AI-powered systems are only as reliable as the data and algorithms behind them, and in this case, it appears the system cast its net far too wide.

Adding insult to injury, itch.io claims their attempts to respond to the accusation were ignored by their registrar. The platform has since been scrambling to resolve the situation, but for the time being, its domain remains inaccessible, leaving indie developers and gamers in limbo.

This incident raises critical questions: How much trust should we place in AI to safeguard brands, and who should be held accountable when these systems fail? For now, it seems that the real victims of Funko’s "brand protection" are the creators and communities who make the gaming world vibrant and innovative.

Let’s hope itch.io can bounce back quickly—and that this serves as a cautionary tale for corporations relying too heavily on flawed automated systems.

UPDATE

The problem has seemingly been resolved. With no statement from itch.io’s BlueSky account, services have been restored on the platform.

MORE CONTEXT

Shout out to @Chocodave on Bluesky for responding to our post with this link! A post from Leafo, who runs Itch.io.

Post Link

“leafo 9 hours ago | parent | context | favorite | on: Itch.io Taken Down by Funko

I'm the one running itch.io, so here's some more context for you:

From what I can tell, some person made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game. The BrandShield software is probably instructed to eradicate all "unauthorized" use of their trademark, so they sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was "fraud and phishing" going on, likely to cause escalation instead of doing the expected DMCA/cease-and-desist. Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this. Their website, if you care: https://www.brandshield.com/

About 5 or 6 days ago, I received these reports on our host (Linode) and from our registrar (iwantmyname). I expressed my disappointment in my responses to both of them but told them I had removed the page and disabled the account. Linode confirmed and closed the case. iwantmyname never responded. This evening, I got a downtime alert, and while debugging, I noticed that the domain status had been set to "serverHold" on iwantmyname's domain panel. We have no other abuse reports from iwantmyname other than this one. I'm assuming no one on their end "closed" the ticket, so it went into an automatic system to disable the domain after some number of days.

I've been trying to get in touch with them via their abuse and support emails, but no response likely due to the time of day, so I decided to "escalate" the issue myself on social media.”