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Funko and BrandShield say it wasn’t their fault itch.io was taken offline, site creator says otherwise


Funko and BrandShield have both posted statements saying they weren’t to blame for a takedown request which led to itch.io being taken offline for a while.

Earlier this week, the entire itch.io site was taken down by what its creator referred to as “a bogus phishing report”.

itch.io founder Leaf Corcoran claimed that toy company Funko was using “some trash ‘AI Powered’ Brand Protection Software called BrandShield”, which he says flagged a disputed page and filed a “bogus” report with itch.io’s domain registrar, which then ignored Corcoran’s response and disabled the domain.

Funko and BrandShield have each released statements blaming the registrar iwantmyname for the site’s temporary closure, while Corcoran has instead suggested BrandShield was to blame.

Funko’s statement claims that “one of our brand protection partners”, likely meaning BrandShield, “identified a page on itch.io imitating the Funko Fusion development website”.

It adds: “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.”

BrandShield’s statement claims that its “AI-driven platform detects potential threats and provides analysis, and in this case, an abuse was identified from an itch.io subdomain.”

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“We identified and reported the infringement, and requested a takedown of the URL in question – not of the entire itch.io domain,” it claims. “The temporary takedown of the website was a decision made by the service providers, not BrandShield.

“BrandShield remains committed to supporting our clients by identifying potential digital threats and infringements. We encourage platforms to implement stronger self-regulation systems that prevent such issues from escalating.”

However, Corcoran posted his own side of the story on Monday, in which he acknowledged that the domain registrar shut down the site despite his response to them, he also accuses BrandShield of deliberately submitting a more serious, false claim of “fraud and phishing” to escalate the issue quicker.

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“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,” Corcoran explained.

“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.

“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.

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“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.”

The itch.io site is back online now, with Corcoran announcing the news on X with “on this day, we rise above Funko Pop”.