A pizza place in New Jersey is flooding with phone calls from gamers asking whether it is related to the video game "Five Nights at Freddy's." The restaurant, Freddie's Restaurant and Pizzeria, has been suffering financially due to the massive curiosity.
The pizza joint is located in Long Branch, New Jersey and its telephone has been ringing endlessly after fans of "Five Nights at Freddy's" started to ask if the business is tied with the hit horror online video game.
Kotaku noted that Freddie's Pizzeria is not in any way connected with "Five Nights at Freddy's." The pizza joint is a family-owned and operated Italian restaurant, launched by Fred Scialla.
According to the restaurant staff, they would receive at least 200 calls every hour and these were not to place food orders. The calls were generally by kids who were curious whether the restaurant was Freddy Fazbear's pizza parlor in the game.
The nonstop calls would hinder actual customers from ordering on the line.
GameSpot said that Freddie's also took on other strategies to work around the endless phone calls, such as rotating employees to handle the lines.
The restaurant could not simply change its phone number, considering that it has been running since 1944 and already has a solid base of loyal customers who may have memorized their digits for years.
Overall, the owners realized that they are losing big business due to the popularity of "Five Nights at Freddy's."
Oscar Hernandez, manager of Freddie's, decided to install additional phone lines to accommodate the flooding calls. The staff also started to check the caller ID first to determine whether the call was coming from out of town, which most likely originates from another curious "Five Nights at Freddy's" gamer.
Aside from the New Jersey pizza place, other similarly named restaurants are also having the same problem. One pizza restaurant in California has also been getting phone calls from players about "Five Nights at Freddy's."
Scott Cawthon, creator of the game, tried to help the businesses by advising gamers not to call any phone numbers which they think may be associated with the game.
He clarified that there are no phone numbers linked with the "Five Nights At Freddy's" game or marketing and that all locations are merely fictional.
"Five Nights at Freddy's" launched in August 2014 and has spawned several sequels, with the latest in January 2016. More updates and details are expected soon.
