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Hooray, Roblox's virtual IKEA opens today, and the jobs it offered spawned "over 178,000" applications

Look, I'm not judging any of you, serving virtual meatballs is a noble occupation.

The virtual IKEA in Roblox.
Image credit: Roblox/IKEA

Your prayers have been answered. A fully functional virtual IKEA - yes the Swedish flat-pack furniture shop - opens in Roblox today, with ten people having earned the jobs that were on offer to work in it. Those jobs, in case you were wondering, recieved "over 178,000" applications.

If you're out of the loop, first of all, I'm very sorry. Second of all, we covered IKEA originally putting out the job alert for this Roblox store earlier this month. The pitch was simple. If you were over 18, lived in the UK and Ireland, and liked the idea of being paid the same rate as someone working in one of London's actual IKEAs, you could apply to help people choose their furniture and/or serve meatballs in Roblox.

Well, now the search for folks to man"The Co-Worker Game" is over, with ten lucky applicants being set to open it up today, June 24, and begin "[immersing themselves] in the working world of IKEA".

IKEA says it recieved "over 178,000 applications over the two-week application window" for those ten gigs, which is definitely a number of people. But, hang on a minute. Here at VG247, we put big numbers in context. So, even if we assume, like I am, that at least about one in ten of that application total was people jokingly applying - possibly after being egged on by their mates - that'd only be about 17,800 of those. Taking that off the 178,000 applications we know IKEA got, you'd still be left with 160,200 applications that were from folks who seriously wanted to serve virtual meatballs.

I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from this, aside from the UK job market possibly being in even more dire straits than I already knew it to be. Regardless, good on those ten people for hopefully securing a decent bag.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to try something new, I’ve not done something like this before and hope there would be more opportunities like this again,", one of these freshly minted IKEA Roblox employees, Yasmin, said, "I just know it will be great fun, and I still can’t believe I’ve been selected.”

If you want to spent tonight browsing a virtual IKEA in Roblox, you can check out The Co-Worker Game here. If it hits 7000 likes, it looks like IKEA'll be giving away headpieces inspired by its cuddly shark, the iconic Blahaj, so that's cool.

If you like Roblox, you can check out our regularly updated codes pages for everything from Elemental Dungeons Simulator to Pet Catchers.

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