IKEA made a mod for Skyrim [video]

6 days ago (youtube.com)

IKEA bullied the developer of the indie game The Store is Closed into gutting the whole game. [0]

It’s a shame how people can even acknowledge, let alone applaud IKEA’s “funny” gaming-related ad after their successful meddling with SCP folklore, not to speak of the chilling effect their actions may have had on indie gaming.

[0]: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-store-is-closed-indie-s...

  • Yeah sorry man, that's clearly IKEA so it's obvious they had to act on it. Can't sell IKEA-branded games without their permission. Even on their Steam trailer, the first second is clearly IKEA. Just changing the name is not enough. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1593010/The_Store_is_Clos...

    Sometimes it's not that deep. Sometimes the cute little indie dev just made a mistake.

    The game is also not out yet, even though rewards were promised in June 2024.

    • No reasonable person would have been confused into thinking it was an official IKEA game; IANAL, but it seems unlikely to me that IKEA would have ultimately prevailed in court, though a simple change to the color of the logo would probably have been helpful to the devs of the game.

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    • Kind of reminds me of a college classmate back in the 80s made a Hypercard game which he had called Escape from Harvey Mudd but which the college asked (maybe demanded?) that it be renamed as it started to get distribution so the more commonly seen version was called Escape from Grid Tech. I would guess that there might have been some reputational concerns as that classmate was one of the people who dropped out of Mudd during my time there (the late 80s cohorts had a lot of people, myself included, who had wavered between humanities and sciences and after exposure to life in the sciences decided to opt for the humanities instead—most of us ended up doing programming for a living having no marketable skills post-college. The one person from my freshman year suite who actually finished his degree at Mudd went on to become a music professor).

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    • I've never been in an IKEA but it looks like Backrooms to me

      did Backrooms also infringe on IKEA or maybe every furniture store has the same concept

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    • >The game is also not out yet, even though rewards were promised in June 2024.

      Yeah that’s crazy I wonder why

  • This is a tough one. The main culprit here is that trademwark law forces the trademark owner into an active defense posture to avoid losing the trademwark. This is very different from patents or copyright. So, in a way, IKEA was forced to write that nasty letter to the developer. Still, it's obvious fromo the published game footage that the developer was trying to walk a line between referencing IKEA and calling them out directly.

    I kind of wish that lawyers could settle these things more amicably than by opening with outright threats. The game is clearly taking SCP 3008 as its inspiration and that is a a quite satirical horror story take on IKEA stores. A part of me wishes that companies would be a bit more relaxed about obviously comedic or satirical uses of their identity. What would IKEA lose by approaching the developers in a more supportive manner initially? Say, by offering some more constructive suggestions to steer them away from the particular elements they take offense at.

    • It sounds like they mostly did something like that:

      > The lawyers then tell the developer, “You can of course easily make a video game set in a furniture store that does not look like, or suggest, an IKEA store.” The presumed game development experts go on to explain, “You can easily make changes to your game to avoid these problems, especially since you do not plan to release the game until 2024.”

      (from https://kotaku.com/ikea-furniture-horror-game-store-is-close..., linked in the article)

      They also listed exactly what they think infringes their trademark.

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    • Ah, but this clearly falls under parody. No reasonable person would assume this depicts a genuine ikea store. That said, ikea could’ve just granted permission to use their trademark in a horror parody game. That would’ve been a fun ikea promotion rather than stoke animosity

    • They could have bought the game rights, hired the devs, or otherwise come to some licensing agreement. It’d have been a boatload of free publicity for very little outlay. I guess they may not have wanted customers to associate their store with scary things, though.

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  • I don't believe in intellectual property, but to the extent that we live in a world where IP exists, the original game as described is pretty clearly using IKEA's trade dress.

    • I too am skeptical of government-granted intellectual monopolies, as Richard Stallman correctly names them. Trademarks are the least offensive of them because they expire relatively quickly and are designed to prevent genuine consumer confusion. Trade dress rules help prevent consumers from unwittingly buying products from Company A while thinking it's Company B.

      This video game creates zero risk that a consumer will buy furniture from the wrong store, so trade dress should be inapplicable. IKEA would likely even lose in court. But as the article points out: legal proceedings ... get really expensive.

      This move was pure bullying by IKEA lawyers.

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    • ALDI/Lidl copy every big brand under the sun. They've been litigated against, but they get away with it way more often than they lose. Many cases fail to prove that consumers were misled, and (I find this incredible) one of the strongest defenses is that store has a strong reputation for brand imitation, so there is in fact no confusion. People go to Lidl to buy Neos, knowing full well they're not Oreos. It's also surprising that other supermarkets get away with it when they sell the copycat product next to the original.

      If you could afford lawyers, you could definitely get away with that game, but it's easier for IKEA to stomp you.

  • I haven’t played The Store is Closed, but to everyone saying IKEA had some obligation to shut down a parody…videogames parody real brands all the time, including their colors? Why was this different?

    Some examples offhand:

    - Fallout’s Nuka Cola is an obvious parody of Coca Cola (also same colors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuka-Cola) and Cram is an obvious parody of Spam (same colors)

    - GTA is full of these: Sprunk (an obvious parody of Sprite, again same colors), Fruit (obviously Apple—same colors, same branding style, same use of iPrefix and “think” marketing), definitely others

    - Saints Row “Freckle Bitches” was a fairly obvious reference to Whendy’s (“I’m all grown up”)

    All of these games were bigger, not Indy games at all, and none of the parodied brands saw any obligation to sue AFAIK. Would IKEA have gone after Rockstar, given that they’re much bigger and very popular? I’m suspicious that this was a case of “small target” rather than “big problem”.

    (Ok, I clicked through the article, it looks like it was just a demand letter? My impression is that demand letters are nearly meaningless. No judge has to approve them, and they cost an hour or two of lawyer time.)

    • > it looks like it was just a demand letter? My impression is that demand letters are nearly meaningless. No judge has to approve them, and they cost an hour or two of lawyer time.

      A solo indie developer who is busy building their debut title is no match for the legal team of a global multi-billion corporation. The developer would run out of money way before the parties could reach any kind of settlement.

  • My (very) naive take:

    Was it important part of the game that the store looks just like IKEA?

    If yes, that probably makes it more likely that it was a trademark infringement and that IKEA was justified. If no, it shouldn't be a big deal to change the colors, just to avoid potential confusion.

    • Yes it unfortunately was. Because the SCP lore this game recreates refers to a horror scenario set inside an infinite inescapable ikea store.

    • I saw beads at a bead store today that were clearly Pepsi/Sprite but they were "Pepsis" and "Spritc", presumably to be legally distinct.

      Is it important that the beads looked like Pepsi/Sprite? Kind of, people want recognizable brands

  • Interestingly, that link is the first time I've ever gotten a Cloudflare HTTP 451. Apparently that site is banned in Japan for "gambling".

  • Is it possible that that influenced IKEA's decision to make the Skyrim mod in OP? That way, they have a stronger trademark case, because it's more likely for a consumer to confuse the fake IKEA game with the real one.

  • What percent of people do you think know that? I sure didn't. I'm guessing to two decimal points, exactly 0.00% of people know that. It's a shame how people can make sweeping statements about something when it's beyond obvious no one knows what they're talking about.

The concept reminds of Chex Quest, a Doom total conversion based on Chex, the cereal brand.

I loved playing it when I was 8 or so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chex_Quest

  • Chex Quest was really good, wasn't it!? I was so impressed. Today I learned, it is known for having been the first video game ever to be included as a cereal box prize.

    • It was surprisingly good, and innovation-wise as a marketing project, way ahead of its time in the mid 90s.

  • Even I've heard of Chex Quest and the brand has never been available in my country.

    Interesting lesson there. No one hates marketing tie-ins when you make something genuinely fun, i.e. that people want to play. Opposed to forcing a distraction.

  • I remember playing a somewhat decent adventure based on the BiFi salami snacks in the 90s.

I watched a bit of someone's play through and was impressed by how much content there actually was for a one-off bit like this. I would have assumed they would have just made enough content to make for a funny ad but there's quite a lot of scripted storyline and voice acting.

  • I mean, they even recreated an IKEA inside a dungeon and you have to navigate it and get the part to build your Kallax

I normally dislike shameless brand crossovers, but this faux low-budget, yet-another-janky-mod vibe... they committed to the bit. I can't hate it.

  • My dislike for brand crossovers is inversely correlated with how reasonable a match the brands are.

    Ikea vs. The Sims? Lame, obvious

    Ikea vs. Skyrim? 10/10 no notes

I was wondering what compelled Bethesda to update the game a few weeks ago, the first time in two years. On PC, any update to the game breaks mods that rely on DLL modification, so you'd expect them to be wary of doing it for no reason. Maybe improving support for this was the impetus.

  • They needed to do a few nerfs and buffs to the other storage solutions to balance the game for the introduction of KALLAX

  • >so you'd expect them to be wary of doing it for no reason

    average skyrim patch notes:

    - added no features

    - fixed no bugs

    - moved around some buttons in the paid mods menu

Play a game long enough and the main challenge becomes inventory management. I look forward to the IVAR update.

  • Oh, so you're team IVAR?

    BILLY gang forever!

    (just kidding, I actually have both, and way more IVAR shelves than BILLYs at that(BILLIES? What would be the proper plural here?))

  • Casting Leomund’s Secret Chest, now comes with TROFAST modular storage management system.

Funny, but I hope it doesn't catch on. This genre of games is rather free from ads and the last thing we need is corporations shoving their marketing agenda into classics.

  • This is precisely how you advertise. But the beauty is that you can only do this a few times before the formula becomes worn out.

    Others will have to come up with something else, entirely different, that is equally inventive.

    Brilliant ad on the part of IKEA. It has all of the right ingredients, is totally unexpected, outlandishly absurd, and hits at a massive audience. Truly peerless.

They should call it "Bagaget" which translates to "The Luggage" and put lots of small feet under it. Those who read Discworld will know what I'm talking about.

One of the known bugs in skyrim that will likely never be patched is that you realistically can't fill a room with cheese wheels, cabbage, bottles of wine or any other static objects (in a cell that persists items, like in an owned house). It's already hard enough to put an object on a table or shelf and expect to not find it on the floor if you leave and come back.

Add enough objects to keep track of and it'll crash the game immediately on loading the cell. Some of the examples of cluttered objects in the video are already pushing the limits of what will crash the game engine.

  • You've reminded me of a story from the Witcher 3 devs where during an earlier build items would randomly disappear. Horses, weapons, tankards, even NPCs... you name it, on certain conditions they would vanish before the player's eyes. Turns out they weren't just disappearing, they were "teleporting" by effectively respawning at a single point in the dead centre of the map. When they investigated the location there was an innocuous looking dwelling that was packed to the rafters with all the vanished assets. Spending too long in the place would crash the game, presumably because the collection detection on that number of cheeses, sheep, and grunting Nilfgaardian soldiers was just too much.

This makes me want to go back into Skyrim. I moved to another country when this came out and had no friends at the beginning, so Skyrim was my evening plan, and I was fortunate enough to have an Xbox 360 back in the day.

That game though...the cottage near Riverwood with the "nice old lady" who turns out to be a necromancer once you break into her cellar. There are not many games like this. Pure gold.

Do you think someone at IKEA had the idea and they hired someone to do it, or did someone have the idea and made it, and then talked IKEA into making it official?

  • It is likely they had the idea they (the people that actually made the mod) could talk a brand into this and IKEA was one of the many brands pitched. But someone at IKEA has to have seen this and say okay this makes sense for it work obviously. Eitherway i would say it doesn't really matter as long as they do fun stuff like this

I keep looking over my shoulder to the pair of KALLAX behind me ever since I watched this, just to check if they budge.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for a mod that gives mustaches to mudcrabs.

The mudcrabs are a proud and fancy race!

Fun fact: IKEA is a plural. One element of an IKEA is referred to as an IKEUM.

Skyrim has to be one of the most modded games out there, with maybe only Minecraft being up there in terms of mods. Its probably also the biggest game out there when it comes to... lets just say nsfw mods.

Just a reminder that they are a corporation and to not fall for their PR. They are actively destroying the environment while paying as little tax as possible. The cheapness of their furniture does have externalities one needs to consider.

  • At some point people need to take some responsibilities too. I have a bunch of ikea furniture. I have never thrown much away. Maybe 1 piece. I manage to disassemble and reassemble the rest when I need to. Sometimes I need to take a closer look at make sure I can disassemble and reassemble it.

    People view cheap as disposable. That’s not entirely corporations fault.

    • Yeah, the total mass of all my Ikea furniture is probably equivalent to one hardwood table, so it can't be that bad for the environment.

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  • At this point their products have so little material that it may be better for the environment to buy an IKEA one vs decent furniture (from the standpoint of caring for the environment)