alt Hacker NewsThis 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.
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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.
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.