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Funko
Players and developers were surprised to find itch.io, a popular open indie game marketplace, offline earlier today, and the perpetrator is someone you probably don't expect.
According to the platform's X/Twitter account, it's Funko, the creator of block-headed collectibles, who took the site down.
"I kid you not, itch.io has been taken down by Funko because they use some trash "AI-powered" Brand Protection Software called BrandShield that created some bogus phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain."
Apparently, the system flagged a fan page for Funko Fusion with links to the official site and screenshots as harmful, and the registrar disabled the whole source automatically.
"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," said the alleged owner of the platform. "Because of this, I honestly think they're the malicious actor in all of this."
When they received the news, they "expressed their disappointment" to itch.io's registrar and host (Linode), saying the page was removed.
"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."
Now, itch.io is back up, so I guess the registrar has finally received the message, but the situation undoubtedly left a sour taste in the involved parties' mouths.
Earlier, the website introduced a new field that helps users filter out AI-generated content. So whose side is winning now with "trash" AI software cutting pages?
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