The entirety of Itch.io was temporarily taken offline earlier today, but the site appears to have been restored.
Reports of the site going dark spread after a post on the official Itch.io BlueSky account claimed the problem was caused by Funko, the company behind the collectible Funko Pop figurines.
“…They use some trash ‘AI powered’ brand protection software called Brand Shield that created some bogus phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain,” the post read.
However, at the time of writing, the site appears to be back and fully functional, suggesting the issue has been remedied.
It is unclear what Funko or Brand Shield found on Itch.io that triggered the phishing report.
Just last month, Itch.io took a stance on AI and introduced a new requirement that developers must declare whether their game was made using any form of generative AI, whether for graphics, sounds, text, code and so on.