Recently I wrote about how the much loved itch.io store got taken down by Funko (as in Funko Pop figures). The situation seems thankfully sorted with itch back up, but things got a little weird.
Writing on X / Twitter, the itch.io official account posted to mention Funko called their mother:
That's pretty crazy behaviour, if really true. Especially, when you see the below.
While the official Funko account an hour later on that same day posted up a statement:
At Funko, we hold a deep respect and appreciation for indie games, indie gamers, and indie developers. We’re fans of fans, and we love the creativity and passion that define the indie gaming community.
Recently, one of our brand protection partners identified a page on http://itch.io imitating the Funko Fusion development website. 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.
We have reached out to @itchio to engage with them on this issue and we deeply appreciate the understanding of the gaming community as the details are determined. Thank you for sharing in our passion for creativity.
There's two issues with the statement. The first, is that there's not even a simply basic apology included there. The second, is that it wasn't just a simple take-down request. As itch founder Leaf "leafo" Corcoran posted on Hacker News:
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 myself on social media.
What an absolutely insane situation.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quote"imitating the Funko Fusion development website"So, they still think this is the case, somehow.
If you have a look at their Funko Fusion site I see next to none similarities.
If you take in consideration they have some dev site, I guess it should not be publicly known. And then I must I say, I wonder who copied from whom if there were any similarities.
Quoting: weipahI also don't get the partThey're specifically talking about the page itch.io took down. The pages on itch can be heavily customized.Quote"imitating the Funko Fusion development website"So, they still think this is the case, somehow.
If you have a look at their Funko Fusion site I see next to none similarities.
If you take in consideration they have some dev site, I guess it should not be publicly known. And then I must I say, I wonder who copied from whom if there were any similarities.
Cloversheen a day ago
PS: And literally having the platform owner's mom being called on him lmao
Last edited by based on 10 December 2024 at 11:51 am UTC
Like I needed more reasons to not buy anything from Funko lmao.
Quoting: KlaasWhy do they claim that they did not request a takedown of the itch.io domain, when that is exactly what happened as a result of their requests?They're completely honest, their takedown partner issued the request.
It's a little like hiring someone to beat someone up and clarify that you paid them for it and than claim in court that you didn't beat this person up.
Lots of companies use external partners to do takedown requests for them.
Takedown requests are bad marketing and automated takedown requests are a legally grey area(it can be done legally, but nobody actually does it.)
Those partners are specialized companies who get paid to take these risks for their customers, but sometimes they fail at keeping their customers out of the wind like here.
An example of such a partner.
Edit:
This is a great example of "it can be done legally, but nobody actually does it" by the way.
The itch.io founder challenged the takedown.
In such a case they should receive a response from the rights holder within 24 hours.
They didn't.
If this was a DMCA takedwon request, they can now come and try this out in court, but the burden of proof lies with them and not everyone with a website has the budget and guts to take a coorperate behemoth to court.
Which is why this guy saw only the path of public shaming as a way out, which worked by the way.
He has a response.
Last edited by LoudTechie on 10 December 2024 at 1:51 pm UTC
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