Oh my, apparently Courtney Love isn’t the only one miffed at Activision. According to the Associated Press, former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl released a joint statement condemning the use of Kurt Cobain’s likeness in Guitar Hero 5.
“While we were aware of Kurt’s image being used with two Nirvana songs, we didn’t know players have the ability to unlock the character,” they said. “This feature allows the character to be used with any kind of song the player wants. We urge Activision to do the right thing in ‘re-locking’ Kurt’s character so that this won’t continue in the future.”
At this point I have to say that if such a thing is possible, Activision really ought to make it happen tout de suite. No, they probably don’t have any legal — or really, ethical — obligation to do so, but at this point it’s probably not worth the bad PR to stick to their guns, and it would be a nice gesture to outraged fans.
But then, I have no idea whether patching the game in that fashion is even possible.
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Obviously they don’t really care about the ethics of the situation. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t someone during the process of modeling, production or testing that didn’t raise the “maybe this isn’t a good idea” issue.
They do have a good business reason to lock it though – if bands start getting the feeling that Activision doesn’t have respect for them or their music (or the bands that inspired them), getting quality music lineups will get tougher – especially when there’s another company producing music games that just proved they can handle revered artists with respect.
Mike here just nailed it on the head. The truth is this ‘bad PR’ might actually boost sales or interest in the title but the ‘bad taste’ the GH brand will leave with other artists will be very hard to overcome.
If Activision hopes to have other band solo games in the future or featured likenesses in new GH# releases they may want to handle this more dleicately.
As it stands I think the day of the GH: Band Name is in trouble, at least amongst the tech savvy artists that will be aware of the recent Harmonix release. Then consider Rock Band Network on the horizon…
All good points. If I were in a big-deal band and was looking at partnering with either Activision or EA, I’d take a good, long look The Beatles RB, and compare it to not just how this Cobain issue is being handled, but also what appears to be going down with GH: Van Halen.
I feel like the Guitar Hero franchise is at a watershed moment: They can regroup, get a little more selective, try to bulk up their cred…or they can keep squeezing the cash cow until it keels over.