Indie game store Itch.io is currently offline – and claims that is the fault of the company behind Funko Pops.
Indie game store Itch.io is currently offline – and claims that is the fault of the company behind Funko Pops.
After a “bogus phishing report” Indie game store Itch.io is currently offline. Even though the servers are still online, the website’s domain currently leads towards IP addresses not owned by itch.io – making it inaccessible for users.
This happened only days after the gaming marketplace allowed users to use their itch.io-URL as their name on Bluesky accounts. You can do this, after you spent $10 on the platform – but right now, the current issue with the domain, means that names generated this way have an “invalid handle” error on Blueskey right now.
Itchi.io blames Funko
Itch.io itself blames none other than Funko, the company that makes pop culture collectibles like their world famous Funko Pops. In a post on X (former Twitter) it says the shutdown happened “because they use some trash ‘AI-powered’ Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar.”
I kid you not, @itchio has been taken down by @OriginalFunko because they use some trash "AI Powered" Brand Protection Software called @BrandShieldltd that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, @iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain
— itch.io (@itchio) December 9, 2024
In another post the indie store explained, that it is now waiting to re-enable its domain when the domain registrar responds.
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.
— itch.io (@itchio) December 9, 2024
How to enter Itch.io anyway
Itch.io is hoping that the problem will be resolved in the next few hours and can get back its domain name. Until that, you can – if you know how to – tweak your hosts file that maps hostnames to IP addresses, then you can use the 45.33.107.166 IP address. But don’t forget to remove the entry once the domain is restored.
Do you use Itch.io? Did you have problems entering the domain?
