IKEA asks horror game to change so people stop comparing it to IKEA [update]
kotaku.comFrom the Kotaku article this article is a (bad) rewrite of:
https://kotaku.com/ikea-furniture-horror-game-store-is-close...
Updated: 10/31/22, 12.00a.m. ET: Ikea UK got back to us this morning, providing the following statement:
While we think it’s flattering that others are inspired by the IKEA brand, we must be diligent to ensure that the IKEA trademarks and trade dress are not misapplied. Various elements of the video game currently correspond in appearance with the IKEA brand features. We’ve reached out to the creator of the video and asked them to make changes to those elements to ensure that this is no longer the case. They expressed that they understand our request and agreed to make those changes. This should all be well in time for the expected 2024 launch of the game.
Thanks! We've changed to that URL from https://www.cbr.com/ikea-the-store-is-closed-cease-and-desis... now. (Submitted title was "IKEA Sends Cease and Desist to Horror Game over Its Lookalike Setting").
From the site guidelines: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."
This should be at the top. Kudos to IKEA comms team for transparency and clarity in this statement
Honestly, the store in the kickstarter footage does not even look like an IKEA to me - the floors in the game are much more open and less claustrophobic than an actual IKEA.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ziggygamedev/the-store-...
The exterior clearly does, but yeah, the interior doesn't seem particularly familiar.
Fortunately, the letter in question lists the element IKEA finds objectionable: "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 gray path on the floor, furniture that looks like IKEA furniture, and product signage that looks like IKEA signage."
No question that the building exterior and signage are based on IKEA. They might actually violate a trademark. The shirts, sure, not sure that's trademarked, though. Some of the furniture designs might be.
The whole thing seems like a pastiche of SCP-3008, even down to the title and enemies, which is literally a horror story about a dimension that’s an infinite IKEA. It’s definitely IKEA.
It’s also fair use, no one in their right mind would ever think this is an IKEA product and it doesn’t compete with IKEA in any way
Edit: Apparently the Kickstarter says “Explore the underground SCP laboratories and build towers to the sky to find a way out”. Gee, wonder what company was directly mentioned in the corresponding SCP story
> It’s also fair use, no one in their right mind would ever think this is an IKEA product and it doesn’t compete with IKEA in any way
Or there are darker truths and IKEA DOES have products that the horror is competing with
The mundane reality is likely just that the game reveals a way to exit the maze, which is considered a trade secret and could hurt IKEA's business.
Fair use doesn't apply to trademarks and patents.
https://www.trademarklawyerfirm.com/what-is-trademark-fair-u...
Yeah, it does. This isn’t a traditional parody on the surface, but IKEA being a labyrinth of horrors can pretty clearly be read as a parody on their unorthodox store design (no one’s making a horror game about being trapped in a Best Buy lmao). The Creative Commons horror story this is ripped off of is officially named “A Perfectly Normal, Regular Old IKEA” on the site (although no one uses the names of SCPs), which adds to that.
> (no one’s making a horror game about being trapped in a Best Buy lmao)
I know of at least one horror movie made about a supermarket [0], so it's not unprecedented. The IKEA-like aspect here is less "big store after dark" and more of the seemingly infinite maze, which at this point is pretty much a trademark for the brand...
----
is a store layout a trademark?
It's very likely that this would fall under fair use.
The risk for the developers is that they (probably) don't have the money to fight IKEA in court. Thus, placating them is a more reasonable approach, especially considering that IKEA seem to be good sports about it.
Come on, it's an obvious IKEA parody ... but so what, it (should) fall under free-speech protections.
It's rather funny (funny: strange) to me that we live in a day and age when "the look of a store" is a recognizable thing. How did we manage to steer this ship into such strange waters?
How are stores different in this respect than other products/services?
Branding is a thing. Recognizable brands are the essence of trademark. This day and age is not new.
Many businesses have done this intentionally, especially large chains like Walmart and Walgreens, to make it easy for shoppers to enter, find exactly what they're looking for, and complete a transaction quickly and with low friction, so that even when travelling, they are compelled to use them over alternatives.
Why is that strange to you? What would the alternative, "less strange", reality be?
Chain store branding has gotten a lot more consistent and, I dunno, "slick", I guess, since the 90s, excepting a few fast food places that have gone the opposite direction for some reason and toned their branding way down (Pizza Hut, McDonalds). At least in the US.
Like, in 1990 you could imagine a Wal-Mart moving into an old K-Mart's location and not tearing the building down and starting over, and probably not even doing a ton of façade work. Now? Only 3rd-tier sorts of chains go into storefronts without extensive renovation, at least, and the top-tier brands all seem to want to start with an empty slab. You only see the old style in rural small towns that haven't caught up yet (and maybe never will—perhaps there's no way to make a decent ROI on tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra branding in those places). Or, oddly, in places that have really strict building codes for commercial storefronts that forbid breaking from a certain style, so you tend to see the more muted branding in both very-well-off places, and very poor ones, though expressed differently.
stores are owned and operated locally and aren't copied and pasted global monoliths
It’s funny you’re saying that on a site accessible within fractions of a second form pretty much anywhere in the world.
It used to be fun to travel, even locally within the U.S., and see new stores and places you did not have back home. I never thought I would say this, but this Western world is becoming a downright boring place to live.
If they're all selling furniture why do they need to be any different? What's different between the requirements of a low-end furniture store like Ikea in New York and one in San Francisco that would mean there's any sense in running them differently?
> stores are owned and operated locally
You mean franchised. And while perhaps not the dictionary definition, in practice it is the literal definition of a franchise that every instance looks the same as every other one.
I don't thing franchises have to be so boring though, maybe a lot of people aren't old enough to remember... but McDonalds franchises, despite having mostly the same food, used to have the freedom to get a little weird with how the location looked.
Those stores exist too, though.
The UK newsagent WH Smith’s established the look of their stores in 1852. If you have a chain shops with the same owner, it’s hard to imagine why each branch would use a different design.
Would such protections still apply if money is intended to be made? That is clearly the case, since its on Kickstarter.
Parody for money is protected BUT you have to be parodying the thing iirc.
So Weird Al could have made all his songs without permission (but he gets it to be polite) - though he’d still have to pay licensing to use the music iirc.
There’s case law about it. Barbie Girl may be involved. Snoopy vs the Red Baron also.
There's a nerd-famous one involving Penny Arcade using (IIRC) Strawberry Shortcake to parody the style of American McGee's Alice. I think PA ended up caving because it was too hard to defend the use of a character from one owner to parody something about another property entirely. The strip was definitely intended as parody, but including elements from something that wasn't the subject of the parody made it much harder to defend under that exception.
Yep, the famous banned PA comic (you can still find it, of course).
But this response comic was parody of the subject matter, so it is fine: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/04/28/read-it-before...
Maybe. Both cases you mention are songs, not video games. From a modern perspective you would think the laws about intellectual property for video games would be the same as for film and music. I think the long run that will be true. But some of the early precedent has treated video games more like "toys" with less speech protection.
If you are really doing this check with a lawyer who works in the area (admittedly few).
Yeah, and this one is a bit more spicy because the whole point is that you're in a horror IKEA and so the fact that it's clearly an IKEA is part of the "sale value" of the game.
Compare to Carl & Phil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRJEN1pvZ60 - that's clearly a Costco/Sam's Club parody (and they also have FedUPS as a delivery company) but it's not being used to "sell".
It's very complicated and involves trademark AND copyright law, so it could go either way.
Also see Sosumi and BHA ;)
Does it matter if parody is for money? Comedians need to eat too.
It is extremely obvious that this is an IKEA, what are you talking about?
Still, the maze like path, the style of the products, as well as the blue yellow branding make it clear to me that this is happening in an IKEA.
The unicursal path of Ikea would skip an interesting game-play possibility, therefore I guess it is not Ikea-like.
Which game play possibility?
Also, Ikea path isn't actually unicursal, there are shortcuts (famously hard to spot but otherwise accessible for all shoppers).
Don't mess with the IKEA brand, even in good faith, unless you either have deep pockets, therefore very good lawyers, or are very popular and can count on a lot followers on your side.
Anyone remembers about ikeahackers.net? IKEA initially shut it off on bogus trademark violation claims, then backed off only after public outcry.
https://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Site-that-broug...
> It has of course never been our ambition to stop their webpage. On the contrary, we very much appreciate the interest in our products and the fact that there are people around the world that love our products as much as we do.
Literally what they tried to do.
Could've blamed it on an over-zealous employee in the legal department, but instead ran with pretending it didn't happen.
I hadn't seen this - very gross move by ikea.
I feel like this should be relatively fair-use under the guise of parody, right? Though I imagine the dev doesn't feel like going to court over it.
Definitely. Brand name lookalikes are a longstanding tradition in media. See: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlandNameProduct - dozens of subpages and hundreds of examples. If he took this to court he would absolutely win.
Given that a lot of people feel trapped in an IKEA store, I think that's pretty clear.
I have no interest in the game, but I'd chip into a legal-defense fund for it.
Perhaps, under US law. If the creator felt confident about that and only intended to sell this game in the USA, then perhaps a lawsuit could be worth it.
Then again, the "parody" defense may require something more than "the setting is obviously a take on this trademark", something sufficient to label it "transformative". No clue what the legal standard for that is.
> then perhaps a lawsuit could be worth it.
Even in US law, no, there's no scenario wherein the lawsuit against IKEA would be worth ~$50k in revenue (not profit).
He should take it to court. Great publicity for his game!
Made me think of the game "Escape from Tarkov", which has been out for years and has a subset of a mall-setting map called "IDEA" using the same blue/yellow color pallette (1).
[1] https://escapefromtarkov.fandom.com/wiki/IDEA_cash_register_...
That's what I expected this article to be about, because Tarkov could certainly be classified as a horror game from a certain point of view.
Oh this wouldn't hold a hope of winning a copyright lawsuit. They are just hoping to bully the indie developer with their corporate lawyer team. Parodies are protected.
1. The game is not parodying Ikea (it’s not protected)
2. This is not a copyright issue (trademark dilution)
I don’t think you can so easily state it’s not parodying Ikea and there’s an argument for fair-use without that, However, at least in the US (this is maybe in the UK?) arguing fair-use for a trademark can cost a lot of money and is a bit fraught.
Also re the ‘our hands are tied, we must protect our mark’ claims, it’s always an option to license the use.
https://www.kirkland.com/publications/article/2020/11/tradem...
I just don’t see a fair use angle making it very far here. Obviously the “true” test is to actually argue it in court and get a ruling—but it’s fair game to kibitz and make declarations of how you think a case would get resolved, were it to go to court.
Yes, it’s all bench racing but caselaw provides some small manner of clairvoyance.
I think it really depends on jurisdiction. If it was adjudicated somewhere with the Roger’s test, I think it would have a very decent chance. For example, take Seuss v Comicmix, in which Comicmix didn’t sufficiently meet the bar for parody on copyright grounds but cleared trademark fair use.
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=ebdcd5aa-17b1...
I was really hoping that your link was going to tell me that Costco will license me their house brand to use in parody.
hah, we used to volunteer at pax together
The whole premise is essentially making fun of IKEA’s labyrinthine design by imagining it as a literal deadly maze, similar to the mythological Labyrinth
I think it's parody.
If Weird Al did a song about being stuck in an IKEA, it would be parody.
If SNL did a skit about being stuck in an IKEA, it would be parody.
If The Onion wrote an article about being stuck in an IKEA, it would be parody.
Thus, if Jacob Shaw makes a game about being stuck in a (fictional) IKEA, it seems like parody.
In all seriousness, there is one stark difference between a song, skit or an article and a videogame - the latter has two+ orders of magnitude of experience time. I'm not sure if it matters in any way for fair use / being a parody, but a 3-minute song feels different than a videogame that takes 3 or 30 hours to complete.
The article talks about "copyright infringement", but maybe that's just bad reporting.
This appears to just be the CBR article being sloppy in summarizing Kotaku's reporting. The original article makes multiple mentions of trademark infringement, but doesn't mention copyright at all [1].
[1] https://kotaku.com/ikea-furniture-horror-game-store-is-close...
We've changed to that URL from https://www.cbr.com/ikea-the-store-is-closed-cease-and-desis... now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33508853).
It’s almost certainly bad reporting—there are a lot of copies of this article around.
How is the trademark going to be diluted by a game that isn't using the trademark?
The game is using the Ikea trademarks, I think that much is clear. The trademark isn’t just the “Ikea” name itself. Just like if you kept the golden arches but changed “McDonald’s” to “O’Brian’s”—the name is only a part of the trademark.
A color scheme isn't much, and the products don't match.
Copying the arches is basically copying a logo, and I'm pretty sure nothing like that happened here?
Look at the first image:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ziggygamedev/the-store-...
If you asked me to describe it from the first picture, I might say, “It’s a picture of a monster in front of an Ikea store,” and I might not even notice that it’s not an Ikea store.
I don’t understand the “this isn’t infringement” argument, since it looks super obvious like it is supposed to be an Ikea store. I have a hard time imagining someone looking at the picture and saying, “That’s definitely not an Ikea store.”
> If you asked me to describe it from the first picture, I might say, “It’s a picture of a monster in front of an Ikea store,”
Well I wouldn't.
> since it looks super obvious like it is supposed to be an Ikea store
It's supposed to be similar. But trademark isn't an issue unless there's real potential for confusion, and a single glance at a photo where the building is 80% blocked doesn't count.
When someone has a pear phone, it's obvious what that compares to, and it's also obvious that it's not the same brand.
That image evokes Best Buy more to me. They also use rectangular buildings with a blue and yellow color palette, and the visible letters s, t, and y are actually in the name of the company.
Imo, Who can win at a court is meaningful only to entities who can afford and/or spare the $$$ for lawyers and actually go to court.
threads last week, 16,13 and 7 comments:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33424587
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
IKEA sues indie game developer over survival horror game set in furniture store - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33424587 - Nov 2022 (16 comments)
IKEA Asks Horror Game to Change So Folks Stop IKEA Comparisons - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33407015 - Oct 2022 (13 comments)
IKEA issues cease and desist against indie developer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33405541 - Oct 2022 (7 comments)
Kind of reminds me of the book Horrorstor.
I was about to comment this. I’m surprised IKEA never went after that, but I guess it falls within the realm of parody.
The book goes to great pains to say that the store in question is a knockoff brand of Ikea. To be honest, those parts of the book felt a bit stilted; I had imagined them being added at the request/requirement of the publisher to avoid lawsuits.
I read that recently and when I saw this headline I wondered if the author had gotten similar treatment from Ikea...
Seems the case the developers were inspired by SCP-3008 - https://the-scp.foundation/object/scp-3008
IKEA's actions concern me a little. The sub-genre of Urban Fantasy will call in lots of real world elements and then blend in something supernatural. This might have chilling effects for certain kinds of story telling.
I'm not saying IKEA is at all in the right here, but you do have to admit that this:
> 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 gray path on the floor, furniture that looks like IKEA furniture, and product signage that looks like IKEA signage.
is truly, unmistakenly supposed to be a fictional totally-not-IKEA-but-yeah-its-IKEA store. If, instead of furniture, the store had been filled with TVs, large appliances, laptops, cell phones, and related merchandise, while the staff wore blue shirts with yellow name tags, I'm sure you'd have no trouble picking out which store I was describing, in spite of not saying the name, right?
I haven't read the full letter, but this smells like they might be going after a trademark infringement theory. If that's the case, corporations are obligated to do shit like bully video game developers, if they believe that the game's use of their branding would cause confusion or harm the identity of their mark. So, those who condemn IKEA here might just literally be condemning them for being vigorous participants in the capitalist marketplace.
I'm not a lawyer and only vaguely familiar with trademark law, so I'm genuinely curious how some of this works.
> if they believe that the game's use of their branding would cause confusion or harm the identity of their mark
My understanding is "confusion" is centered around people trying to make similar products that seem like they are made by a famous brand. This would be more like if somebody opened a furniture store in a blue box-like building, yellow vertical striped shirts, Scandinavian themed, and named NOKEA[0].
"Harm the identity of their mark" is interesting. It seems intentionally vague, which makes sense[1]. I wouldn't be surprised if the word "harm" is used in the legalese, but it can't possibly cover all cases of potential harm, right? If so, I couldn't review any IKEA product as that arguably "harms the mark" [2].
Basically, I'm curious what "harms" are generally acceptable and which are not. I'm sure this is a really big subject, but in my non-lawyer opinion, it feels like IKEA has a weaker case here because it's a video game and not a furniture store[3].
[0]: Might actually be infringing on two for the price of one!
[1]: To the dismay of programmers everywhere, having hard and fast rules for trademark infringment doesn't really make sense. Those just become instructions for how to infringe legally.
[2]: Tying into previous parts, even if I don't use the word "IKEA", it could still (reasonably) be tied back to them.
[3]: Assuming the game maker removes the purported direct usage of the word "IKEA".
Yeah, I think what you say definitely has some merit, but you & I both know that the law doesn't always work the way non-specialists think it does. While there's certainly a common sense argument (completely apart from the parody angle) that goes something like "@actually_a_dog's truthful review didn't harm $COMPANY's mark; $COMPANY did so by providing a consumer experience that enabled @actually_a_dog to write such a review truthfully," I don't know if or how that comports with the law or not.
So, sure, if I opened up a Swedish-themed store that sold cheap furniture and Swedish meatballs, then called it MyKEA or something, and had the employees wear shirts with yellow vertical stripes on them, I'd be an idiot not to expect a nastygram from IKEA legal regarding my infringing use of their mark in commerce. The question seems to be "Does depicting a store and using recognizable elements of its brand identity in a commercial video game count as 'use of the mark in commerce?'" To that question, you & I may answer "no," but IKEA, and possibly the law, might answer the other way.
Well, it's tricky, but many games do that and get away with it.
In many games you have cars or guns which are obvious lookalikes of real life cars and weapons but have their names changed to avoid copyright infringements.
Look at GTA. They can pretend it's taking place in Los Santos, Las Venturas and San Fierro, but we know what real life locations they are meant to represent. We know what that VINEWOOD letters on the hills are meant to represent, we know what "Area 69" military base is meant to represent.
> Look at GTA. They can pretend it's taking place in Los Santos, Las Venturas and San Fierro, but we know what real life locations they are meant to represent. We know what that VINEWOOD letters on the hills are meant to represent, we know what "Area 69" military base is meant to represent.
True, but none of those names are owned by a corporation as trademarks. If there was a store that with white/minimalist decor that sold similarly designed cell phones, laptops, and tablets and had a name and logo referencing a fruit, what you have to ask yourself is if Apple would care.
Honestly, I am not sure. If Fight Club can literally have an actual Starbucks cup in every scene and the production company not get sued, I don't even know what that's about. Everybody knows that movie isn't about Brad Pitt beating the crap out of a bunch of other guys for funsies, right? I don't know for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd bet they didn't license the cup or the logo from Starbucks, either.
GTA had their iFruit, or whatever it was, that was clearly a parody of Apple.
Trademark protections only come into play when there's risk of customer confusion. So even without the parity claim GTA and the game in the OP are almost certainly fine. No one is going to be confused and think that Ikea has put out an Indie computer game.
You should check GTA cars then. There's Pegassi, Ocelot and Grotti. My favorite non-sports one is an electric named Coil. It even has the characteristic sound.
>True, but none of those names are owned by a corporation as trademarks. If there was a store that with white/minimalist decor that sold similarly designed cell phones, laptops, and tablets and had a name and logo referencing a fruit, what you have to ask yourself is if Apple would care.
Apparently they did not, because GTA V references "iFruit phones" with not just the in-game phones but also branded merchandise for the characters, an Internet radio station, and even a separate downloadable iFruit app for your real world smartphone.
You think multi-million dollars productions would take these kinds of risks willy nilly? Hell, I'd bet that your examples are product placements and the companies literally got paid.
It's probably the fine line between parody and copying; the ikea game was ruled too much like a copy, GTA was ruled a parody.
Nothing was ruled so far. IKEA lawyers just looked at it said they don't like it, doesn't matter whether it's valid parody or not. And in many cases it works, because the potential cost of defending in court is too much.
> If that's the case, corporations are obligated to do shit like bully video game developers,
IANAL, but AIUI they're only obligated to do something, but that something can be "tell the developers that they need to get approval to use trademarked stuff and then immediately hand them permission to use the trademark for free". It's all about controlling use of the trademark, not being obligated to be a bully about it.
The obligation to defend trademark and the fair use doctrine are, when combined, in the best case, nothing but busywork for the courts.
It's clearly a parody. I really can't understand the potential for brand damage here ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
what's the relation between the-scp.fundation and scp-wiki? are they owned by the same organization or is it a fork?
It appears to be a third-party, ad-free mirror. The original site is also hosted on wikidot, which has been getting DDOS'd intermittently over the past year.
I'll skip the legal analysis and state with confidence that this game is morally in the right and Ikea and the systems supporting their claim are morally in the wrong.
So long as the game does not claim to be sponsored, supported or be acting in the name of Ikea, it should be allowed to do what it wants.
Also, Streisand Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Here is some footage of the gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPT6GlMWEjU
That’s a 3rd party YT channel, not the studio/game’s creator.
The game is based on an SCP article in which the store is an IKEA, so it's not a coincidence even if the developer omits the name.
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3008
Still, IKEA should chill out and be happy that they are a part of popculture.
Which is actually to IKEA's point. They can say, look, everyone seeing the game thinks it's supposed to be IKEA.
Even then, can a store be copyrighted? Trademark-wise is a horror game in one of their markets and likely to confuse customers?
That would presumably be part of the defense's argument. That even though the game looks similar to IKEA, no one actually thinks it _is_ IKEA.
I'm not saying IKEA has a fool-proof case, or even is really worth the effort, but if people are looking at a thing that looks like IKEA and saying, hey, that's an IKEA, then that's probably enough to get it heard in court.
It's pretty obviously not an IKEA, because you can buy IKEA's products in an IKEA but you can't here. But maybe it's not obvious enough whether or not it's an IKEA ad (think product placement) so if the game incorporates something distasteful then it could get consumers thinking that the real IKEA is running a distasteful ad? If someone tried to run an ad on TV for a company without their permission, I think it would generate similar concern.
Consumers of Weird Al and SNL know that the original artist isn't advertising. Consumers of games might not know that the original company isn't advertising?
But don't you need this kind of recognition for a parody? It's not really a parody if no one recognizes what you're parodying, right?
Eh, NFL announcers were talking about Microsoft Surfaces as iPads ...
IKEA should just embrace it.
Which is still fair use as a parody.
Parody and fair use are copyright concepts, not trademark concepts.
The video description also references IKEA:
"Check out the official reveal of the new Open-World Action Horror game that has you explore an infinite IKEA store and survive it's many different entities and discover it's secrets"
The video description is written by the YouTube channel, not by the creator of the game
IGN (17m subscribers) even have a video titled 'A Survival Horror Game That Traps You in IKEA'
I'm not sure the narrator is the actual developer of the game though.
I want to buy this game now. Like when the city of Montreal complained because a Counter Strike map looked too much like their train station. Whenever corporations or governments say something is bad I tend to suspect the opposite.
Even though the Kickstarter campaign is over, you can buy the game (with alpha/beta access) here: https://www.patreon.com/TheStoreisClosed
This may sound weird, but if the public "experiences" something it seems like it should be partially owned by the public. For example, certain Far Side cartoons feel like they partially belong to me because they are ingrained in my web of thinking and experiences. Not saying I should be able to sell them, but we need to maintain fair use.
I get the feeling they don't like their dystopian hell holes compared to dystopian hell holes.
It could be more about the risk the game will reveal to the players the way to exit the maze.
Is this not like the look and feel lawsuits over user interface from the initial fights over WIMP interfaces and later about slide to unlock, black rectangles and multitouch? Weren't they ultimately found not to be protectable?
Doesn't matter if the developers can't afford to fight it.
s/developers/people/ here and you've hit on the main fraud of most Western legal systems. Essentially no private individual can stand up to a corporation that wants to bring the full weight of millions of dollars against them in the form of legal resources. Even borderline ethical tactics like burying the opposition in paperwork are far more effective when the other side is literally 1 guy.
We need some kind of real, actual tort reform here that does allow individuals to take on corporations. Corporations won't like that, of course, but this is a "too damn bad" type scenario in my mind. The big, practical question in my mind is "How do you do something like this without running up against Citizens United?". I think we may have capitalism'ed ourselves into a corner here.
>Essentially no private individual can stand up to a corporation that wants to bring the full weight of millions of dollars against them in the form of legal resources. Even borderline ethical tactics like burying the opposition in paperwork are far more effective when the other side is literally 1 guy.
So long as the state also makes frequent use of this disparity the loophole will remain open. The state would rather let corporations run over individuals then give up the power to do so themselves.
With this global, free advertising, perhaps they can.
I actually have been a little excited for this game, its goofy but looks fun with friends and its a fun spin on a place I visit every few months or so. The uniform definitely screams Ikea and the outside of the building. Shame I think its a really cool concept and doesnt ruin Ikea for me if it went live as-is.
I saw some info about the latest Call of Duty game having to remove some maps from its multi-player mode because they resemble actual in life buildings like a hotel.
Video games are artwork, playable artwork, but still I thought art was protected in a way. How will VR worlds that resemble real structures be treated?
In high school, a friend of mine was kicked out of school and we were all visited by the police for making a counterstrike map based on our high school.
We did it because it's a maze of blind corners and weird little hidey-hole closets.
But oh boy did I learn about art protections through that process. They don't exist when it comes to violence of any kind, even perceived violence.
It was rumored the Columbine killers had re-created their highschool campus layout in Doom. It was only a rumor[0], but enough people believed it, or at least it indulged their confirmation bias, that game levels are now taken seriously as threats. No doubt the swift response to your counterstrike map was influenced by that legacy.
This is absolutely crazy and saddening. My whole childhood and teenage years I dreamed of recreating some locations from my life in an action-adventure/FPS setting (was thinking more urban exploration than shooters, but still). I also couldn't understand why even games happening ostensibly in a well-known city would be so obviously inaccurate with their recreation. Nowadays I know why...
In all fairness, if I was a hotel owner (or IKEA), I would not want my venues to be recognizable in a video game (or other media). Soon, I would no longer be "that luxury resort with the great customer service" but "that place which has blood flood out of elevators in The Shining". Not the best marketing.
TBH a lot of hotels look similar, and they likely went out to take pictures; resemblances may be unintentional, but easy to do.
> How will VR worlds that resemble real structures be treated?
Probably just like anything else that falls under these laws; copyright laws and licenses. I can imagine a hotel would be OK to be in a virtual world, just as long as no people get virtually shot in there.
"TBH a lot of hotels look similar, and they likely went out to take pictures; resemblances may be unintentional, but easy to do."
Not in that case. The game takes place in a amsterdam and they intentionally tried to make it as realistic as possible(just changing names). And in that map, you play inside that particular hotel and then part of the hotel gets destroyed.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/amsterdam-hotel-call-of...
So it is not really coincidence.
But is it worth doing a legal battle over it? I don't think so, but the hotel owners surely got attention.
I've always wondered why it is companies can sue game developers for using their buildings, but not Google or Microsoft.
I'm certain that same building is in Google Maps. And it might be in Flight Simulator, give that it's built from satellite images.
I’m actually kinda curious what the “legal” definition of art includes. The word already seems to be ambiguous enough. I’ve gotten into multiple arguments here about whether things like music are art.
They're going to lose more brand from doing this than they would have going along with the joke. I bet good money this would have subconsciously primed a lot of the people who play it to shop at Ikea. Now it won't. Wasted opportunity.
They should do the same to the studio that released The Human Centipede. Those drawings that the German doctor made on his whiteboard look a lot like Ikea's, from their instruction booklets.
If IKEA wants to care so much, they should partner with the game developers and actually put IKEA in the game, hell yeah I would buy a couch from them then
There is also the option of passive-agressive compliance:
step 1: Change the textures and make it possible for users to add their custom texture packs. (yea, it's more work but may help to build community)
step 2: Oh no some anonymous users have created texture packs with IKEA colors and sharing it with each other. They could go after the users but good luck going after all the file-sharing options.
I hope the game involves NPCs with the store's logo burned into their flesh.
When asked about it, they'll explain it's just corporate branding.
This game appears to be extremely similar to an existing Roblox game: https://www.roblox.com/games/2768379856/3008-2-71
This Roblox version doesn't have weapons, but it's pretty fun, actually. Ask your kids -- they probably played it.
i only skimmed the article but this is clearly based on the SCP story—-which does take place in an ikea.
Link for those who haven't read it yet:
From rough memory, IKEA has had apps or partnerships to enable consumers to build 3D models of their place with IKEA furniture. Those 3D models might be widely available as a result, which provides a fairly quick boost to any indie developer trying to build a game.
Wish it was that easy to extract the 3D models from their web designer utilities. I've made almost perfect design of the flat remodel before we hired the contractors earlier this year, and one major thing that was off was the use of generic furniture - I just couldn't afford to model the stuff myself (I did copy the color patterns and textures, though).
Just checked, "Styr" (name of the shop in the game) is not a rot13 or any variation (different offset or reverse order) thereof of "Ikea".
You can figure this out by observing that S and T are sequential, but none of the letters in IKEA are.
I don’t get it. IKEA is much scarier than that game!
The game doesn't do the setting justice, IKEA seems like a great horror setting otherwise. Many places and diagrams to hide in.
Fuck ikea
LOL.
There is nothing special about Ikea furniture. its generic slop made of compressed wood like the stuff you find in office furniture at your local bank.
Who asked?
Their brand is recognizable, despite your objections to their product.
Couldn't the dev lean in and claim it's a parody? Instead of making it LESS like Ikea, use Ikea brands directly. I'm pretty sure parody law permits this.
Disclaimer: I am not, nor will ever be, a lawyer
Parody requires that your work be a commentary on the protected work you have repurposed specifically.
Weird Al actually secures permission and never relies on parody protection, but if he didn't then "Fat" would fail, Michael Jackson was many things but notably fat was not one of them, whereas his "Smells Like Nirvana" is a parody because it's about Cobain's incomprehensible singing and other aspects of the Nirvana song.
So what's the commentary here for IKEA?
That IKEA organises its stores in a hard to understand mess for mere mortals, seemingly unending and leading to any trip for an unenlightened visitor taking multiple hours, and this is taking the idea to the extreme, making you almost forever stuck. In fact, the only people exiting SCP-3008 are those with the knowledge of the shortcuts.
Saying that something is a parody isn't exactly hard.
I never understood the IKEA is a maze argument. There is literally a single straight line running from entrance to exit, with signage. You can walk the entire route in about 5-10 minutes.
> So what's the commentary here for IKEA?
That it's a dystopian hellhole inhabited by zombies?
> Weird Al actually secures permission and never relies on parody protection
This is technically true, but according to an interview he said he doesn't actually have to do it by law, but rather by goodwill. That's because "parody" encompasses more than only direct commentary, and actually is just a detail under "fair use" which is a whole lot more general.
>So what's the commentary here for IKEA?
Seems pretty clear to me. IKEA is known for being mazelike and easy to get lost in. The game is an exaggerated horror take on that.
I'd just change the main color, the fonts used in the stores signs to make it look different enough and just add a subtitle: "the game that annoy the famous swedish furnitures store!"
Honestly I don't understand their move as it is free advertising to them.
> I'd just change the main color
I would probably invert the colors. Having a yellow store and blue shirts would not look like IKEA at all.
Probably. Even in it's current form it could probably pass as parody. But that still means you have to fight a corp in court.
Dumb as hell, especially when Halloween was the other week.
If anything should have been working with them on an official version of it using real Ikea 3D models. Like make it even more accurate if anything.
Marketing wise would have been crazy good.
In 2014 IKEA backtracks on legal take down of fan site for furniture hackers :
https://www.dezeen.com/2014/06/19/ikea-backs-down-in-legal-k...
They should ride it out. Great publicity. You can't buy this kind of marketing.
Hi IKEA! I'm introducing you the Streisand Effect.
In what way does this reference the Streisand Effect? Everyone already knows IKEA and this won't make people want to do more or less with IKEA. This looks like standard trademark / trade dress complaint.
It makes more people aware of the game.
Most likely the game designer will change the design, and then everyone wins. IKEA wins and the game developer wins from the attention. Which is what they all want, unlike Babs.
> Most likely the game designer will change the design, and then everyone wins.
This is most likely based on SCP-3008 , which parodies the hard-to-navigate nature of Ikea (and adds some horror elements based on it). A generic store will not have the same impact.
If the game designer is smart, he will change all colors, branding, everything and allow the players to install mods. Good luck to IKEA for shutting down every single IKEA mod archive in the WWW.
That's the opposite of the Streisand effect, which here brings attention to the game.
Ikea should be honored to be chosen it will boost sales.
I cannot do a horror movie that passes in a public place of sales?
Please this should be thrown out in a second in court and damages paid to the author for his sufferings and worrying
You're getting downvoted here, but it seems like a common sense position like this just isn't reality. Quite sad. I wish life could be this simple.
This article has been copied a bit, my take here is:
1. Ikea sent a C&D to a small indie developer alleging trademark infringement or trademark dilution (NOT copyright). Seems like this has been lost a bit, and most articles are reporting on other articles.
2. If go to the Kickstarter page, the Ikea branding features prominently in the promotional materials for the game. It LOOKS like blatant trademark infringement or dilution to me. It’s not like you fire up the game and find out that it’s set in an Ikea. The game is marketed as a game set in Ikea, except for the term “Ikea” itself, which is scrubbed out.
3. I can’t see any parody angle here. It seems like it’s a horror game which is supposed to be set in an Ikea, but it’s not making any kind of commentary on Ikea. Like, how is this supposed to be some kind of protected speech? As far as I can tell, it’s “What if you were trapped inside an Ikea, and there were monsters?”
People seem to like it for the David vs. Goliath angle. However, nothing about this needs to be set in Ikea. Just like how SCP-173 didn’t need to use that particular artwork. If you think it was right for SCP-173 to change artwork, but it’s wrong for this SCP-derived game to change the branding for its setting… why?
Edit: For context:
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-14469202/announcement-r...
> However, as authors (and staff) didn't know much about licensing originally (nor did SCP have the significance at the time for it to be as big of a deal), they would often grab images from the Internet at random, including images that their creators would not allow the use of.
> […]
> Izumi Kato has extremely graciously allowed us to use Untitled 2004 on our site, on the condition that Untitled 2004's itself or its likeness would not be used for commercial purposes. Nonetheless, we cannot indefinitely keep the image on SCP-173's page, especially since it has become increasingly difficult for us to prevent Untitled 2004's likeness from being used for commercial purposes by others as SCP grows.
> Licensing aside, Untitled 2004's usage on the Wiki is also an ethical issue. Izumi Kato did not intend nor ask for his art to be used as an SCP, and the meaning and purpose of Untitled 2004 has been, in some ways, permanently tainted by its use in the article. Kato kindly and retroactively allowed its use for SCP-173 in 2014 on condition, but it was clear he was not happy with the situation. Additionally, his art's been exploited by third parties trying to profit off of SCP, which has likely caused him much distress.
> As such, we believe the most correct course of action in this situation is to remove Untitled 2004 from SCP-173. Although this process has been delayed significantly, the longer we wait, the more harm is done to Izumi Kato's creative vision and the risk of legal issues becomes greater.
> nothing about this needs to be set in Ikea
Sure it does. IKEA either invented or popularized the concept of designing a store in a maze-like structure, to _force_ customers to walk through aisles of product to entice them to buy something, even if they're not looking for anything in particular. If you walk into an IKEA store, the only way out is to walk through the entire store. It's why they have one-way arrows to guide the traffic.
This layout is particular to IKEA, and no other store evokes the sense of dread of being forcefully locked in a retail environment. This is why having a horror game set in an environment that parodies IKEA specifically makes a lot of sense, and would connect far more with players than if it was set in some random store.
Could've been handled better