Love Sues Activision-Blizzard Over Cobain Likeness

Courtney Love, ex-wife of the legendary rockstar Kurt Cobain who died in 1994, has announced on her Twitter page that she is “gonna sue the shit” out of Activision-Blizzard after the latter supposedly used the likeness of Cobain in the recently released Guitar Hero 5. For more details, follow the link.

On the 9th of September, around 12:26 AM Love posted the following Tweet on her page:

“For the record this Guitar Hero shit is breach of contract on a Bullys part and there will be a proper addressing of this and retraction .”

Only a few minutes later, she added:

” […] WE are going to sue the shit out of ACtivision we being the Trust the Estate the LLC the various LLCs Cobain Enterprises”

Since that moment, her Twitter page has been flooded with countless tweets dedicated to the subject. Activision has also made a statement regarding the subject today, which was as follows:

“Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero 5”

To shed a little more light on what the actual problem appears to be, the two remaining Nirvana members also issued a joint-statement that revealed they are unhappy with the fact that the likeness of Kurt Cobain can be used in the game as a character for non-Nirvana songs. Their statement is also included below.

“We want people to know that we are dismayed and very disappointed in the way a facsimile of Kurt is used in the Guitar Hero game. The name and likeness of Kurt Cobain are the sole property of his estate – we have no control whatsoever in that area.

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. 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.

It’s hard to watch an image of Kurt pantomiming other artists’ music alongside cartoon characters. Kurt Cobain wrote songs that hold a lot of meaning to people all over the world. We feel he deserves better.

Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl“

As more details emerge, they will be added to this post. Those interested can find the Twitter page of Courtney Love here.