UPDATE: The itch.io Site Domain Has Been Restored After Been Taken Offline By An Alleged Funko "Bogus Phishing Report"

Prominent gaming marketplace itch.io, which has been a great proponent for independent game developers, creators, and studios globally, has unexpectedly been taken offline. The news has sent shockwaves across the gaming industry as this platform provides developers, creators, and studios the tools needed to promote, distribute, and sell their content and gain information on "how people discover, download, or play what they've created."

The official itch.io social media channels have posted a statement regarding the site takedown, in which they've made damning allegations that a "bogus phishing report" was responsible for the platform's takedown. More specifically, they have named popular toy manufacturer and brand Funko as the sole culprit for this phishing report behind the site's takedown.

10th December 2024 Update: The official itch.io social media account updated that their domain has been restored with the site fully functional following the recent takedown notice. The original reporting continues below.

It's being reported that the platform's store services are online; however, in a report from The Verge's Tom Warren, the site's domain remains inaccessible as it's "currently pointing towards IP addresses that itch.io doesn’t own." Posting across its Twitter and Bluesky accounts, itch.io vehemently blames Funko, citing that they're using "some trash AI-Powered Brand Protection Software called BrandShield," which generated this "bogus phishing report" that was forwarded to their registrar.

As a result, the platform's registrar has been ignoring their responses, which led to the platform having their domain "disabled." They have been updating developers, creators, studios, and players on the ongoing situation throughout the day as they have managed to "take the disputed page down" once they received the notice; however, they added that their registrar's "automated system likely kicked to disable the domain."

Unfortunately, they cannot provide an estimated timeline of when the domain will be restored as itch.io responded to one Twitter user's question, which stated that they're awaiting a response from the registrar. However, should this downtime period extend beyond eight hours, they may consider using a new domain to get services back online momentarily, but they are hoping that it will "get sorted out before then."

As they're currently waiting for a response, they further explained that a new domain was considered in the wake of this situation; however, "there are implications with third-party services that make it not a trivial swap," and as such, informed developers, creators, and studios to "tweak" their "hosts file use" to 45.33.107.166 if possible. They have issued a warning to those who are editing their hosts file that they must ensure that they "remove" these lines once the domain is back online as they can "hold an IP for a while," but it can be changed if it's updated on their "back-end infrastructure."