Itch.io, the popular developer-friendly indie game marketplace, has revealed that the site has been taken down by a seemingly erroneous IP protection request by none other than Funko Pop, the pop culture collectible maker. According to Itch.io, the bizarre take-down happened as a result of Funko's automated IP protection provider, and it happened despite Itch.io taking action to prevent the take-down. The site has since been restored, with the offending page removed, but it took more than a little effort on the part of Itch.io's management. The whole situation seems to have been caused by poor communication on the part of Itch.io's domain registrar, Iwantmyname, since that's where the decision to remove the entire site, instead of just the offending page, seems to have originated.

According to posts on X by BrandShield, Funko's IP protection partner, the company's automated system flagged an apparent phishing attempt by an Itch.io subdomain, prompting BrandShield to request the removal of the offending subdomain, notifying both Itch.io and Iwantmyname. Itch.io says that it then removed the offending page and sent an e-mail confirming that it had taken the requisite action, but that e-mail apparently went unread, leaving Itch.io without a site for what appears to be around eight hours. Eventually, someone at Iwantmyname was able to address Itch.io's communications regarding the take-down, and the site was restored in the morning of Monday, December 9.BrandShield and Funko have both since responded to the Itch.io take-down. BrandShield says that it only requested the take-down of the specific offending subdomain, and Funko published a more lengthy response. In its response, Funko basically explained that it did not actively request the removal of Itch.io, although it said it had reached out to Itch.io and requests the indie gaming community's understanding regarding the accidental take-down.

At Funko, we hold a deep respect and appreciation for indie games, indie gamers, and indie developers. We're fans of fans, and we love the creativity and passion that define the indie gaming community.

Recently, one of our brand protection partners identified a page on http://itch.io imitating the Funko Fusion development website. A takedown request was issued to address this specific page. Funko did not request a takedown of the @itchio platform, and we're happy the site was back up by this morning.

We have reached out to @itchio to engage with them on this issue and we deeply appreciate the understanding of the gaming community as the details are determined. Thank you for sharing in our passion for creativity.—Funko (@OriginalFunko) on X

Ultimately, it appears that this take-down was a result of an over-abundance of trust in automated systems, since a quick human review—whether on BrandShield's or Iwantmyname's side—would likely have picked up that the phishing report was a false positive. The people most affected by the outage were likely the game developers who choose to publish their games on Itch.io.