The world’s largest indie website is accused of phishing through AI, and the blame is on Funkos

The world of indies has been shaken for a few hours today after the largest independent video game website went offline. The issue is somewhat complicated, so let’s take it easy.

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The independent game store Itch.io is now online after being down for a while due to a false phishing report. Although the game store’s servers remain online, the website’s domain points to IP addresses that do not belong to Itch.io, making it inaccessible to most people.

Itch.io blames the pop culture collectibles company Funko for the issues in a post on Twitter, “because they use a garbage brand protection software called ‘AI-powered’ Brand Protection Software that created some bogus phishing report to our registrar.”

Everything we know about Funkos and phishing

Although the page in question has been removed, the domain registrar of itch.io, iwantmyname, continues to disable the domain, probably due to automated systems. According to a post on X, the indie game marketplace is now waiting for the domain registrar to respond and re-enable its domain.

If you know how to modify your hosts file that assigns hostnames to IP addresses, you can use the IP address 45.33.107.166 in the meantime, but you will need to remove the entry once the domain is restored.

Itch.io expected that the issues would be resolved within hours to avoid having to deploy a new domain name. We confirm that the website is now operational.

The issues with the domain arise just a few days after itch.io began allowing its users to use their domain name for Bluesky accounts.

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It is difficult to bring together in one topic artificial intelligence, indie video games, phishing, and Funkos.