The store is closed (and owned)
Under the name of The Store is closed, its creators are seeking funding on Kickstarter to complete the development. Its approach is quite simple: you are inside a department store with infinite labyrinthine corridors from which it is impossible to get out, and the store employees are strange, very aggressive creatures who will not allow customers inside while the store is open. is closed.
With the help of all the furniture that you will find along the way, you will be able to create tools and utensils with which you can fight against these strange beings and even create small shelters in which to hide and rest alone or accompanied, since it also has cooperative play.
But it won’t be easy. The dark and sinister environment will make your legs tremble on more than one occasion, and the constant pursuit of the creatures will give you more than one scare. But for scares, the letter of cease and desist from IKEA.
IKEA doesn’t like the game
You don’t have to know too much about the Swedish firm to intuit that The Store is Closed It is inspired by the IKEA department store. The employee models wear the unmistakable yellow striped polo shirt, and in the main menu you can see the exterior of the building, which is blue with large yellow letters forming the word STYR.
At no point is the word IKEA used, but the look is obvious. This is what has caused IKEA to send a cease and desist letter to the creators of the game, alleging that the resemblance to their corporate colors and the use of a Scandinavian word as the name of the store suggest that everything that happens in the game game takes place in an IKEA store.
For that reason, IKEA’s lawyers have sent a first notice to the developers to remove all these elements immediately, so as not to confuse users. But to what extent does it stain IKEA’s image?
As they have been able to verify in Kotaku, the unmistakable blue building with large letters only appears in the main menu of the game, and the furniture used is part of a 3D resource bank, and has not been cloned from the original IKEA designs as the brand claims. Also, the name of the establishment is STYR, which is nothing more than a play on the word “store”, although it just so happens that Styr is a word that exists in the Scandinavian vocabulary. Be that as it may, the news has allowed the game to be on everyone’s lips, and the Kickstarter campaign, which needed 10,000 pounds to get off the ground, accumulates already more than 60,000 poundsso we imagine that its creator will be willing to withdraw any hint of inspiration from IKEA in order to keep the proceeds.
