Mass Effect, Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, Fallout - they’ve all got Funko Pop figurines. A mainstay of popular culture, the Funko franchise has this year come full circle, with the release of Funko Fusion in September giving the plastic collectibles, often based on videogames, their very own tie-in platformer. But now, allegedly, a wrinkle in the company’s brand protection software means that Itch - the spiritual home of experimental and independent games, and alternative digital store to Steam and Epic - has been taken offline. Continue reading The whole Itch store has been pulled offline, and apparently it’s Funko’s fault MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best free games, When is the next Steam sale?, Best indie games

Monday Morning Meme Madness

Image: Epic Games Indie game storefront Itch.io is currently offline because of what it describes as a bogus phishing report. While the game store’s servers are still online, the domain for the website is currently pointing towards IP addresses that itch.io doesn’t own — making it inaccessible for most people. Itch.io blames pop culture collectibles company Funko for the issues in a post on X, “because they use some trash ‘AI-powered’ Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar.” 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, @iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain— itch.io (@itchio) December 9, 2024 While the disputed page has been taken down, itch.io’s domain registrar, iwantmyname, still disabled the domain likely due to automated systems. According to a post on X, the indie game marketplace is now waiting on the domain registrar to respond and re-enable its domain. If you know how to tweak your hosts file that maps hostnames to IP addresses then you can use the 45.33.107.166 IP address in the meantime, but you’ll need to remove the entry once the domain is restored. Itch.io is hoping the problems will be resolved in a matter of hours so it doesn’t have to deploy a new domain name instead. The domain issues come just days after itch.io started allowing its users to use its domain name for Bluesky accounts. If you have spent $10 on the platform then you have the option to use your itch.io profile URL on Bluesky, but the current domain issues mean anyone who switched to the custom itch.io URLs has an “invalid handle” error on Bluesky until the main itch.io domain is back online.

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