Achieving funding for your game through Kickstarter is a really difficult goal to achieve and that is what he has achieved The Store Is Closed. Developer Jacob Shaw’s work has far surpassed the initial $11,000 in grosses and it’s already over $60,000 with several days to go.
The premise of the title is simple: we are facing a cooperative survival in which we will have to create all kinds of weapons and constructions to survive a hard night against beings from the underworld. All this destroying furniture to get resources and be able to defend ourselves. Where? In an “infinite furniture store”.
As pointed out from my boxIKEA did not like this at all. The global furniture giant has sent a letter to Shaw stating that his work infringes the company’s trademark. Accordingly, you are required to make the necessary changes in The Store Is Closed to “remove all traces associated with the famous IKEA stores“, within a maximum period of ten days. The letter has been signed by Fross Zelnick, IKEA’s lawyer in New York, and notes the following:
“His game uses a blue and yellow sign with a Scandinavian name for the store, a blue box-shaped building, yellow shirts with vertical stripes identical to those worn by IKEA staff, a gray path on the floor, furniture that looks like IKEA furniture, and product signs that look like IKEA signs. All of the above immediately suggest that the game takes place in an IKEA store.”
The truth is that nowhere on the Kickstarter or the page of Steam of the title an explicit reference to Ikea is made. The fictitious name of the store is Styr and Shaw has revealed that the furniture was purchased as part of a generic asset package. All in all, IKEA’s main argument for pointing to The Store Is Closed is that the press has linked the game with the line of stores.
So Shaw’s plans have changed with such a threat from focusing on the alpha stage to “desperately revamping the whole look of the game so I don’t get sued.”