Collectible company Funko and "online brand protection" software suite BrandShield have both denied causing yesterday's takedown of Itch.io, which resulted in the storefront being taken offline for several hours.
Yesterday, Itch.io site owner Leaf Corcoran said that a "bogus phishing report" had been made on behalf of toy company Funko, with the report apparently coming from an AI-powered software suite called BrandShield, which Funko apparently uses.
Corcoran elaborated that the request pertained to a fan page for action-adventure game Funko Fusion on Itch.io, and while a request of this nature would usually take the form of a DMCA takedown, a "fraud and phishing" report was issued instead.
In a statement on social media platform X, Funko says "a takedown request was issued" for the specific Funko Fusion fan page Corcoran referred to, not for the whole site; Funko is adamant that it "did not request a takedown of the Itch.io platform".
For its part, meanwhile, BrandShield says its AI platform "detects potential threats and provides analysis", and that "an abuse was detected" on an Itch.io page. Like Funko, BrandShield says it requested a "takedown" of the specific URL in question and not the Itch.io domain as a whole.
BrandShield goes on to say that the decision to take down the Itch.io domain as a whole was "made by the service providers" and not by BrandShield.
As readers on X point out, though, the request that was made to Itch.io's domain registrar wasn't a standard DMCA takedown notice; it was a "fraud and phishing" request, which is likely to have different - and probably far more drastic - response protocols from domain registrars.
Things get stranger, though, if a post by Itch.io yesterday is to be believed.
In the post, Corcoran says that Funko "just called [his] mom", sharing a screenshot of a message allegedly from his mother in which she says she received a "strange call from a company about accusatory statements on your social media account".
Corcoran says the message from his mom is "not a joke", and if that's the case, then it's not the best look in the world for Funko, especially since users seem to be rallying around Itch.io in this matter. We'll bring you more as we get it.
