Overview

The 2024 itch.io Takedown refers to an incident in which the indie gaming-oriented digital distribution website itch.io had its domain suddenly revoked by its registrar sometime around December 8th, 2024. The cause of the DMCA takedown was reported by itch.io to be a phishing report generated by an AI-powered "brand protection" service purportedly utilized by Funko Pop, the creators of the collectible vinyl figures, resulting in a shutdown of itch.io's services for several hours. The event garnered backlash from many online as the controversy unfolded.

Background

On the night of December 8th, 2024, the open indie game marketplace itch.io website was suddenly disabled by BrandShield, an Israeli "threat removal" service advertised to use artificial intelligence and big-data technology, which generated a false phishing report against a page on itch.io that was allegedly requested on behalf of Funko Pop and submitted the report to Linode, the hosting service used by itch.io, and iwantmyname, the domain registrar service.

On December 9th, 2024, itch.io published a statement on its official X^[1] account regarding a sudden takedown, writing, "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." The tweet (seen below) amassed over 6 million views and 78,000 likes in a day.

itch.io clarified in a following tweet^[2] that the company did "take the disputed page down as soon as we got the notice because it's not worth fighting stuff like that," regarding the Funko Pop request. The post (seen below) received more than 765,000 views and 20,000 likes in a day.

Developments

Shortly after itch.io's statement went viral on X on December 9th, 2024, Hacker News^[3] user @leafo, who claimed to be running itch.io, posted a comment on the forum going into more detail about the situation (seen below).

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.

Funko's Response

On December 9th, 2024, Funko's official X^[4] account posted a statement regarding the itch.io website takedown, writing, "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." The tweet (seen below) received roughly 397,000 views and 1,500 likes in a day.

Iwantmyname's Response

On December 9th, 2024, iwantmyname was then contacted by Polygon^[9] in which a representative of the company wrote, "The domain name was already reinstated earlier today after the registrant finally responded to our notice and took appropriate action to resolve the issue.”

Online Reactions

The initial tweet published by itch.io gained viral attention in just a few hours, as indie game developers and its users shared their disappointment over the website's takedown. For instance, on December 9th, 2024, X^[5] user @KenneyNL replied to itch.io's statement, writing, "This is terrible news for a lot of indie developers that rely on Itch.io," which amassed more than 37,000 views and 1,500 likes in a day.

On the same day, X^[6] user @JorianneFM posted a GIF mocking Funko's request to takedown the itch.io page, writing, "Funko Pop killing itchio because their ip sludge game didn't sell well." The post (seen below) amassed over 218,000 views and 17,000 likes in a day.

funko pop killing itchio because their ip sludge game didn't sell well https://t.co/OFTrYMgrPt pic.twitter.com/7llvEmK5ew

— jori (@JorianneFM) December 9, 2024

Gaming and software news outlets, such as IGN^[7] and esports.net,^[8] picked up the story and published articles regarding the situation in mid-December 2024.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References