itch.io Suffers Massive Outage Due to Networking Issue

Yesterday morning on Memorial Day, indie game distribution website itch.io was hit by a massive outage that left thousands, or millions of players scratching their heads and driving them into frustration. The outage in its entirety lasted nearly twelve hours and also prevented developers from uploading patches or releasing new titles. itch.io is apologizing for the outage, which was reportedly caused by a networking issue that required them to migrate their servers.

Drillimation Systems, who created the popular Touhou Project NES Demakes series which is exclusively hosted on itch.io, has now opened a further investigation into the cause. There is no evidence of any possible cyberattacks on the itch.io servers, but U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has issued a warning earlier this year about hackers affiliated with hacktivist groups based in China or Russia wreaking havoc on smaller websites. The outage is also highlighting concerns on how itch.io is an inexpensive way for indie developers to get their works out into the world.

It was a big awakening for tens of thousands of players around the world. According to the website Down for Everyone or Just Me, more than 10,000 players reported problems. As previously mentioned, itch.io apologized to users and service is in the process of being restored as of this writing. Nearly 75% of indie development studios who aren’t ready to release games on the major platform Steam by Valve rely on itch.io. Losing access to this site can cripple developers’ plans.

Yesterday’s outage prevented millions of players around the world from accessing itch.io. As the investigation continues, organizations are not ruling out a cybersecurity incident as the cause. As with any website, itch.io makes no guarantee their servers will be up and running 100% of the time, and in the event that the site is down, they cannot be held responsible for lost or missing data.