No Doubt Sue Activision

"Transformed No Doubt band members into a virtual karaoke circus act"
Published 05/11/2009 at 14:00 by Tuffcub
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American pop rockers ‘No Doubt’ are suing Activision for the same reasons Courtney Love got her knickers in a twist over the Kurt Cobain avatar. The band say they agreed with Activision that their likenesses could be used in Band Hero to sing their own songs but are objecting to players being allowed to use Gwen Stefani to perform songs by other artists.

Activision has responded saying it “believes it is within its legal rights with respect to the use and portrayal of the band”.

Their manager, Jim Guerinot, has told Rolling Stone magazine they were “mortified” to discover their likenesses could be used to sing songs by other artists and that each member of the band could be used to sing songs which were written for the opposing gender. The law suit notes that through the game’s ‘Character Manipulation Feature’, Gwen Stefani’s avatar can be made to sing the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women.”

The band did contact Activision before the games release to voice their concerns and requested that they remove or disable the character manipulation feature in conjunction with the No Doubt avatars. Activision officials told the band that doing so would be “too expensive.”

“Perhaps most disappointing is when Activision was made aware of the problem, rather than make a fix they admit was technically feasible, they made a business decision that both the time and money required to do the right thing were too much,” Guerinot said. “I guess they are developing the next level of the game: corporate Rock Hero.”

Source: Los Angeles Times

Comments

Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.


  1. Hopefully No Doubt will succeed with this. I Hate Activision.


    • Yea good luck Gwen I hate that lot . I never even hated on EA when many others did but this Kotick seems a total p…k


  2. I hope this puts a f**king great dent in Koticks wallet. 


  3. “…doing so would be “too expensive.”

    Ironically, that’s my response when asked if I’m buying Modern Warfare 2 :D


    • :)


    • Thats what I would say until I used my £5 voucher on GB :P


    • LOL, yeah. I’m waiting a week or so and getting it second hand. More so Activision dont get my money, than anything else.


      • oooh… good plan! I think I may well have to do this too, since all I want to play is the SP for some controversial civilian slaughtering evilness.

        Im kidding, but I am curious to see what all the fuss is about.


    • good answer :)


    • same here


    • Ditto!! ;)


    • Hahahahahahahahaha :-)

      Proper good giggles, Gastos84 – proper good!


  4. All they care about is money and not the musicians opinions


    • No offence but they are a business, and that is the only purpose in business, to make money.
      The mistake they have potentially made is; instead of the small cost of fixing the issue they may face a larger cost in bad publicity leading to lost income AND potential losses if the court case is succesful.

      I have no probalems with companies making money, if I disagree, I won’t buy, thats the only way they’ll care anyway


      • i’m guessing the mistake they made was imagining that the band y=would just give up and not question the mighty activision, or have i totally misjudged good old bobby kotick?


      • They’ve made a bigger mistake than cost. These music games rely on other peoples music. If activision keeps screwing over the bands that allow them to use their music for their games bands will stop providing music and likeness rights. The Hero franchises will be destroyed by Harmonix,(which IMO is a good thing)- a company that’s more music orientated than game focused. activision is sooo concerned about a signal games botom line that their not thinking about the future of the series. There’s an old saying over here that says ” you don’t bite the hand that feeds you” and if I was a musician, I wouldn’t put my hands anywhere near activision right now.


  5. I thought Courtney Love had the same problem with Kurt Cobain’s likeness singing non-Nirvana tracks


    • ‘American pop rockers ‘No Doubt’ are suing Activision for the same reasons Courtney Love got her knickers in a twist over the Kurt Cobain avatar’?


      • Perhaps I should read articles rather than commenting from Word Press’s back end ;)


      • I can feel you reading over my shoulder whilst I’m typing!


    • I believe that was her gripe, too.


    • She did..  So did the the surviving Nirvana band members.  Not sure if she’s suing tho.  Hopefully she will, and hopefully No doubt will win this one.


  6. To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if their assumption that No Doubt avatars would only be singing No Doubt songs was just that: an assumption. I can’t imagine that a corporation as large as Activision Blizzard would slip up on something like this – it’s probably buried in the small print.
    In the same way that after slagging off Activision about their use of Kurt Cobain, it emerged that Coutrney Love herself signed the contract that allowed them to do exactly that.


  7. Not got much to say really other than…. Tut Tut Activision. :D


  8. “Transformed No Doubt band members into a virtual karaoke circus act”. As opposed to pop-stars in real life, most of whom are simply “karaoke circus acts”. I thank you.


  9. Hate for activision aside, I don’t really think No Doubt’s criticism is fair. They would have been paid so their avatars can appear in the game for their fans to play but they want to gimp it so they’re only promoting their own songs and not the game in general? I mean, what do they expect?


    • They have to protect their image. A band like that isn’t gonna want to have their likeness singing along to Westlife (Can you tell I don’t play these games?)


  10. i can clearly see the reasoning behind this business decision!

    “it takes time and money to do this, the game will be delayed, we going to lose sales!”

    “Then we can’t do it, we need all the money we can get for the lawsuit they will file if we don’t do it!”

    “right!”


  11. I know I’m not a multi million selling musician, but if I was approached by Activision saying we want to put you in our game I’d be happy. If it later turned out that my character could be used to sing other songs from different bands I wouldn’t give a poo about it.

    Seriously, what is so “mortifying” seeing your self/singer singing another song, even if it is originally the opposite gender singing the song?

    Have bands never covered songs before? Have females never sang songs originally by males?

    Next we’ll be being sued for making a character through the “create-a-character” that looks like Gwen Stefani!

    You’d have thought that Aerosmith or Metallica would have complained about something like this too (unless they get around it coz they have their own game).


    • In the case of Kurt Cobain, it was about him singing songs that in reality he would’ve hated (like Fallout Boy for example)..  I expect its a similar thing with No Doubt.


    • now you come to mention it, there was a case where marvel tried to sue cryptic because their character creator could be used to make copies of marvel characters.
      they lost though.


    • This lawsuit isn’t about covering songs or character creations, it’s about activision not respecting the rights and wishes of the artist. Two different artist have now sued over the same issue, and in both cases activisions response was “hey, they signed the contract”. They basically accused Love of being high and money hungry and not reading the contract, but now No Doubt says they had reservations about said feature and asked before hand to remove it. Just because it’s a signed contract doesn’t mean activision now owns Nirvan and No Doubt. If activision is misleading these artists into contracts that extend beyond the original agreement, not only does it need to stop but it’s also illegal. And in the Metallica game, Metallica helped pick the extra songs, so I’m sure Aerosmith did too.


      • *Nirvana* I normally wouldn’t care about it but I have too much love and respect for the band to leave it wrong, and am embarrassed that it is.


  12. A semi colon could drastically change the meaning of that title.


    • :-D


  13. SUE THEM FOR EVERY FUCKING PENNY, ACTIVISION SUCKS


    • I hate my eyes, I just read the last bit as ACTIVISION ROCKS, I was like Eh?!

      Anyway, you go No Doubt! Sue ‘em! Give more money to the lovely Gwen :D


  14. This Sh*t is Bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I am sure it was in the contract. This is not different than most of the GH series. My guess is No Doubt was not happen with the financial agreement after they saw the final product.

    Oh My, they could make Gwen’s character sing A country song!!!!! hahaha