Guitar Hero TV’s planned shutdown spurs false advertising lawsuit

Enlarge / Just one of the hundreds of "Guitar Hero TV" songs that will no longer be playable in a few months.

A customer who bought Guitar Hero Live late last year has brought a proposed class-action lawsuit against Activision accusing the publisher of false advertising and other violations regarding the coming December shutdown of the game's online streaming "Guitar Hero TV" (GHTV) mode.

Activision announced that shutdown back in June, and we noted at the time that the move will make 92 percent of the game's playable songs permanently inaccessible. In the federal lawsuit, filed this week in Los Angeles, plaintiff Robert Fishel argues Activision's marketing led him to believe the game would be "playable online indefinitely or, at least, for a reasonable length of time from the date of release."

The lawsuit highlights Guitar Hero Live marketing that describes the Guitar Hero TV mode as "an always-on music video network... running 24-hours a day, seven days a week" with "a continuous broadcast of music videos" and "new videos continually added to the line-up." Marketing materials also promise that "you'll be able to discover and play new songs all the time."

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