There are lots of ways for an individual person or entity to err when it comes to intellectual property enforcement such that it negatively impacts a website or business. But if you want to get really frustrated, what you need is several entities demonstrating complete incompetence in how they do business and making a victim out of an innocent website. That’s how you get a situation where Itch.io, famed indie video game platform, was taken down for several hours.
This story starts, as all good stories do, with a pop-culture collectables company utilizing an AI-driven brand-protection partner that managed to send a takedown report to a registrar accusing the site of the wrong infraction. Funko, the makers of those cutesy figurines from all corners of nerd culture, partnered with BrandShield. BrandShield’s AI-powered web-crawler took note of a fan page on Itch.io for Funko Fusion, a very real game from Funko. The page even linked back to the game’s official website and included some screenshots of the game.
Now, while that seems quite unworthy of any sort of takedown notice whatsoever, BrandShield managed to somehow report that page for “fraud and phishing” for reasons I can neither get out of any of the reporting nor speculate using my own wetware. Itch.io took down the supposedly offending page quickly in any case, and notified its registrar it had done so, but that notification appears to have gone entirely ignored. And, either because the offense listed was “fraud and phishing,” or because the registrar is plainly incompetent, that registrar disabled the domain entirely instead of taking action against the singular page.
In a Hacker News comment, Itch.io founder Leaf “Leafo” Cohran said that the BrandShield complaint seems to have originated from a single itch.io user who “made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game.” That led to independent reports to Itch’s host and registrar of “fraud and phishing” a few days ago.
While Cochran says the offending page was taken down immediately after the complaints were filed, he suspects the initial complaint meant “our registrar’s automated system likely kicked to disable the domain since no one read our confirmation of removal.”
The itch.io domain was back up and running by 7 am Eastern, according to media reports, “after the registrant finally responded to our notice and took appropriate action to resolve the issue.” Users could access the site throughout if they typed the itch.io IP address into their web browser directly.
Now, Funko reached out quickly to Itch.io wanting to work with them to get this corrected. It also commented that BrandShield didn’t request the entire domain be taken down, only the offending page. But that doesn’t offer any insight as to why the request cited “fraud and phishing” as the offense here. Neither appear to be applicable in any way. And perhaps that contributed to the registrar taking the entire domain down. BrandShield attempted to do some damage control on ExTwitter after all of this, but the community notes appended to its tweets are damning.
As for that registrar, iwantmyname, the simple fact is that the domain was taken down despite Itch.io taking the action requested in the notice. And that’s despite the notion that the page may not have been problematic in any actual way. So, to summarize, Funko’s partner BrandShield sent in a request to takedown an Itch.io page to the Registrar, iwantmyname, but marked it as being used for “fraud and phishing” rather than for copyright or trademark infringement, Itch.io fully and quickly complied with the request to remove the page, and the registrar took down the entire domain anyway. The incompetence alongside the purity of Itch.io’s victimhood in all of this is so stunning it’s nearly dizzying.
But, and I cannot believe I’m saying this, there’s the potential that this might get even more crazy.
Then, the story gets even more ridiculous. In another post that has yet to reveal itself as a silly gag, Itch.io claims that someone at Funko called their mother.
“This is not a joke, Funko just called my mom,” states the Itch.io X account. What follows is a mobile phone screenshot of a text message. “Got a strange call from a company about accusatory statements on your social media account. Call me.”
Just like the writer over at Vice, I keep going back to Itch.io’s Twitter account expecting to see that this was just a joke. But that admission still hasn’t come. Nor has any denial come from Funko itself and there is absolutely zero chance the company isn’t aware of the accusation.
While attempting to extinguish concerns over the Itch.io takedown, Funko did not address the suspicious tattletale who seemingly called the Itch.io representative’s mother. Until specified otherwise, I just have to believe it’s true.
I guess the only remaining question is, now that the site is back up, how will Funko, BrandShield, or iwantmyname victimize the site next? Is a call to the dean’s office warranted? Maybe something on the permanent record?
Or will this trifecta of asininity simply ask Itch.io to go to bed without its cookies and chocolates?
