so hum... Funko has caused itch.io to be taken down, wth | David Amador

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so hum... Funko has caused itch.io to be taken down, wth

Like 9 Dec 2024 at 9:15 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place

3 comments

@djlink what the hell?

9 Dec 2024 at 9:16 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place

more info on ycombinator https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42364033

I'm the one running itch.io, so here's some more context for you:

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. 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. Their website, if you care: https://www.brandshield.com/

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. 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

9 Dec 2024 at 9:17 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place

Octavia con Amore

@djlink thanks for the extra context :bear_love:

9 Dec 2024 at 9:25 | Open on cutie.city