Lawsuit Tests "Sound" Legal Principles

Activision is facing another lawsuit over its Guitar Hero game. Recall that The Romantics sued Activision over "Guitar Hero Encore: Rock the 80s" back in November (see our post here). Now a new class action suit alleges that the Wii version of "Guitar Hero III" does not support Dolby ProLogic II surround sound, even though the game's box says that it does.

The suit claims that Activision has engaged in unfair or unlawful business practices and unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising with respect to GHIII, and that the representative plaintiff would not have purchaed the game (or would not have paid so much for it) had he known that it would only output mono sound.

Activision has promised to send out replacement discs which support Dolby ProLogic II, but that it will not do so until 2008.

This is a straightforward claim -- the product doesn't do what Activision says it does. Whether a class action lawsuit is required to fix things is another question, but as video game lawyers we probably shouldn't answer that.

Coverage at Wired and at GameSpot.

Wired has a link to a PDF of the complaint here.