Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown

I'm just going to post this comment to this thread as well, since this is newer. Classic shifting of blame and no one taking responsibility for scummy actions.

Fun fact: Funko's current CEO is the ex-president of Wizards of the Coast!

Why is this relevant? Well, under her leadership, WotC sent pinkerton agents to someone's home to threaten them because they got some Magic the Gathering cards early. She said things like Dungeons & Dragons players were under-monetised, pushing to make the Table Top game more like a microtransaction-filled video game, and helped with the OGL scandal.

The OGL, for anyone unfamiliar, was an Open Gaming License WotC had for years with D&D 3rd party creators. It allowed certain things to be created using D&D mechanics and lore by anyone that followed its guidelines and allowances. A couple years ago, WotC tried to change that so they would make more money off of people trying to create things for D&D - to profit off of indie creators passionate about the game. There was a huge backlash, and they eventually went back on this decision.

All this to say, you can see what kind of leader the current Funko CEO is, and what's happening with itch isn't surprising to me.

They requested a takedown before talking to the website owners? That's such a hostile move

So Funko issued a non-apology blaming Brandshield.

Brandshield issued a non-apology blaming the registrar (Iwantmyname), and saying their AI tool definitely had nothing to do with it

And Iwantmyname hasn't even put out a statement.

Fucked all around, yet it seems nobody will be facing consequence for this except Itch.io who got their website nuked out of nowhere.

Though if I were Itch, I'd get a new registrar ASAP.

There are lots of finger-pointing here. Funko said the takedown was done by their partner, BrandShield. BrandShield said it was a URL-specific (or is it subdomain?) takedown, not the whole domain. The registrar, Iwantmyname, responded said takedown by taking down the WHOLE domain.

I think Funko shouldn't have trusted AI to do legal-related stuff. BrandShield is a stupid idea born from the AI-hype. It's stupid and shouldn't have existed. Iwantmyname is just as incompetent if not more--they haven't even released any public statement about this. Their customer support are also slow to response apparently.

Itch.io should move domain registrar. Funko should stop using BrandShield, it only damages their brand more.

Also what's up with Funko calling someone's mom lol. that's stupid

I also think that this is why AI won't replace our jobs. I've seen many instances where technologies replaces jobs, but this ain't it

I notice it doesn't include the word "sorry".

Fuck Funko and fuck their shitty CEO.

Not worth thinking about any further. I wish itch.io the best in their lawsuit.

Why is it so hard just to say "this was not out intention, we recognize it was bad, and we are sorry."

There's a lot of words here for a non-apology.

Fuck Funko Pops.

Fuck BrandShield.

I accuse them both of causing itch.io to go down and it is their fault.

Fuck all the corpo fucks involved here with their plausible deniability attempt. If you truly felt any remorse, you'd talk about how you'll disengage this AI chum service, or demand that requests are extremely precise or hyper targeted at specific direct issues. This story of blanket action helps the big company with monkey and always hurts the little guy that gets swept up in their ravenous wake.

Also, educate the next month of your online presence you boosting the brand you wronged with your reach. But you won't do shit, you aren't remorseful.

"Funko did not request a takedown of the @itchio platform."

Man, I fucking hate corpo-speak like this.

Yes, you didn't personally make the request against itchio.... But you hired this company to enforce "brand protection" and that's what they did. So you did actually request the takedown, but you just did so by authorizing another party to make such requests on your behalf.

This is like a military General saying "hey I didn't commit any warcrimes, I just gave the orders to my men to commit warcrimes!"

It so so pisses me off when these companies say shit like "thank you for sharing in our passion for creativity"

It's basically saying "thank you for agreeing with us", which I don't.

At this point you just know that any company saying something like that is abusive, doesn't give a shit and just want to pretend to be respectable.

We HoLd A dEeP ReSpEcT...

Yeah hiring AI slop to take down websites with zero humanity oversight screams "respect."

A corpo bully pointing fingers at some AI slop they use, how convenient

Funko: We would like to apologise for being caught in the act, we will strive to better hide our asshole tactics next time, the person responsible for us getting caught has been reprimanded with 2 weeks paid time off.

Why do people buy those hunks of plastic shit anyway

I "love" how they very carefully avoid making any apology whatsoever.

All the support to Itch.io's mom

Corporate doing corporate shit. And then asking why people hate corporations and their CEOs.

AI to determine people's livelihoods, huh?

By the way, who's the Brandshield CEO? Asking for a friend.

Translation

OhShitOhShitOhShitOhShitOhShitOhShitTheAIReallyFuckedUpPleaseDontSueUsOhShitOhShitOhShitOhShit

Brand protection partners is a much friendlier way to say bloodsucking lawyers.

It would be a real shame if abuse@dtnt.com (the domain registrar of brandshield.com) were to get a bunch of reports about scams and illegal activity found on the website. Bonus points for copying legal@dtnt.com.

Hey, so if BrandShield is being honest, what's Itch's registrar? What do they have to say? 🍿 This keeps getting deeper.

I’m very interested in what the offending page looked like. itch.io in the first reports seemed to suggest it was a false positive, without outright saying so. Both Funko and BrandShield are quiet about it, but between the lines you can infer they think the AI tool’s report was legitimate.

If only we had a few more Luigi, these corpo-shit would think twice

You just know that their "AI driven platform" is a call to google for the brand names they're "protecting" followed by takedown requests issued to the registered email followed by one to the registrar for every domain found.

We need a new internet because this one is fucked.

The fact that a legit website could be taken down just by a big corporation claim, without any further third party or gubernamental investigation. Is indeed frightening.

Didn't they contacted the owners mom about this? Fucking disgusting practices.

That buck just keeps on passing around, huh?

How much you want to bet that response was AI generated?

Seriously, the way it explains things and the repetition reek of ChatGPT