Itch.io is currently offline due to spam ‘AI-powered’ phishing report

Indie game storefront Itch.io is currently offline due to what it describes as a fake report. While the game store’s servers are online, the website’s domain is currently pointing to IP addresses that itch.io doesn’t own — making it inaccessible to most people.

Itch.io blames pop culture collectibles company Funko for the problems in the post on X, “because it uses ‘AI-powered’ brand protection software called Brand Shield that created a fake phishing report for our registrar .”

While the controversial page has been taken down, itch.io’s domain registrar, iwantmyname, has still disabled the domain possibly due to automated systems. According to a post on X, the indie game marketplace is now waiting for the domain registrar to respond and reactivate its domain.

If you know how to edit your hosts file that maps hostnames to IP addresses you can use the IP address 45.33.107.166 for now, but you will need to remove the entry once the domain is restored. Itch.io hopes that the issues will be resolved within a few hours so it doesn’t have to issue a new domain name instead.

The domain issues come days after itch.io began allowing its users to use its domain name for Bluesky accounts. If you’ve spent $10 on the platform then you have the option to use your itch.io profile URL on Bluesky, but current domain issues mean that anyone who switches to custom itch.io URLs has an “invalid handle” error on -Bluesky until then. itch.io main site is back online.