The Swedish furniture company will sue the developer if he doesn’t make enough changes to its “endless furniture store survival game”.

 

The Store is Closed puts us in a furniture store with no beginning and no end. A mutant horde is trying to kill us, and we must craft defences and weapons from the store’s stock. The game’s creator, Jacob Shaw, described it on Reddit as an “endless Ikea game”. Only it got the attention of Ikea, who sent a letter to the developer’s legal representatives…

“Our client has learned that you are developing a video game, The Store is Closed, which uses indicia associated with the famous Ikea stores without our client’s authorisation. Your game uses a blue and yellow sign with a Scandinavian name on the store, a blue box-like building, yellow vertical striped shirts identical to those worn by Ikea personnel, a grey path on the floor, furniture that looks like Ikea furniture, and product signage that looks like Ikea signage. All the preceding immediately suggest that the game takes place in an Ikea store,” the letter says, highlighting that the press has linked the game to the furniture store in several instances.

The good news is that Ikea is not calling for the project to shut down, just not to resemble or refer to the furniture store. These problems can be fixed, and there is time to do so. As the launch is not until 2024, Ikea does not want Shaw to abandon the development. However, the Swedish company still needs to specify what should be done. For example, the idea of “furniture that looks like Ikea furniture” is unclear. He also told Kotaku that he was buying generic furniture asset packs independent of any brand, so it was at most a coincidence.

To PCGamer, Shaw said he was complying with the claims because he didn’t want to get sued, but he also stressed to this publication that it’s not clear what Ikea is asking him to do. So he’s taking everything blue or yellow out of the game and using garish red in several places. He’s also removing the Scandinavian furniture, the posters, and the pathway marked out on the floor, and the furniture was Scandinavian by default, so he’s going to rename those. He shared several pictures.

However, he’s worried about what will happen if he’s threatened by Target, an American chain store, because of the red colour. He did modify his Kickstarter campaign: instead of alpha testing, he’s going for a graphic redesign, which he says won’t make a massive difference to the development schedule… just Shaw will be more stressed.

Source: PCGamer