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iambateman

at 1:12 the narrator says "in this IKEA."

https://youtu.be/cPT6GlMWEjU?t=69

So...

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That’s a 3rd party YT channel, not the studio/game’s creator.

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 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.

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'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H7kLqDe8WA

I'm not sure the narrator is the actual developer of the game though.

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