Real Life Stores

Hi there, I'm not sure whether this is the right place to post this topic, my apologies if its not but... I was wondering whether or not we were allowed to reference real life stores (McDonalds, Starbucks, etc) into our games if they are non-commercial. I'm not sure if this has an obvious answer but yeah, thanks!

PS: If its allowed what are some good stores that are available worldwide, like I know McDonalds is one. I'm trying to create a modern day area in my game...

I really don't think corporations would care much if it's a small non-commercial RM project.

No one at Enterbrain would have anything against you using some stores names, It's the stores themselves.

If your game is just a little free one and you don't "talk bad" about the stores there most likely won't be anyone who says anything against it.

But I'd recommend using store names and logos you think up yourself, using preexisting stuff always is a bit...

uncreative, I think

You can just alter well known names if you want to be super sure. The worst that could happen is that the company will tell you to take down their logo and such, but I think they've got better things to do. But as I was saying you can just make Burger King to Burger Queen or Captain Burger (sounds burger-joint enough). K-mart can be like L-Mart or Stuff-Mart (if it's not ultra serious you can have fun). I've seen a lot of people change McDonald's log to upside-down and call it Wackdonalds or something with a W name.

As for what's world wide? Only stores I know of are fast food joints (burger king, McDonald’s, KFC, and subway). I haven't seen other American places here in Germany other than that. There's Woolworth's but I think they went out of business in America. You're more likely to see repeating labels and products than actual businesses.

@sabao Thanks for the response that clears the doubts I had!

@mobychan Ok, yeah I wasn't going to do anything bad about their stores... Yeah I also thought of creating my own logos for the stores but I wanted to incorporate real stores to create that realistic modern day feel. But I will see.... Thanks for the help!

@RavenTDA Hahaha thanks for those great examples! (I might consider using one of them... Wackdonalds perhaps XD) Yeah fast food stores are the only kind of stores I know probably due to their popularity, especially McDonalds. Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it! :)

Ya, Japan gets away with that all the time, so I'm sure it's safe.

However make them sound cool and not something like Koka Kola.

Don't go near Disney!

But everything else should be fine :)

As above poster said, if planning to go commercial- go Starbox Coffee, or MrDonalds for example.

What do you mean?? (Not that I'm going to add Disney... Just asking out of curiosity)

Disney is apeshit protective of all their intellectual property. And that goes for all of Disney's holdings - tv networks, movie studios, animations, game division, etc...

If you do a lookup of Disney you should be able to find a list of all their major components without much trouble - it's a lot larger than most people think.

Personally, I would stay away from anything real-worldish just because I don't want to be bothered having to change my game because I got a cease and desist letter in the mail - and that goes for non-commercial as well as commercial games. You can go similar, but not too similar - don't have a burger joint with the 'golden arches' for example. Other than that though, you should be able to come up with stuff that is reminiscent of this world while staying away from actual IP issues (which include 'look and feel').