Judge Drops Mono Case against Activision / Guitar Hero III

As you’re no doubt familiar, there was a bit of commotion when Activision released Guitar Hero III for the Wii because the audio on the disks was delivered in mono, instead of the Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound it listed on the box.

For there part, Activision did acknowledge the problem, and promised to replace the mono copies of the game with the corrected disks, but that wasn’t good enough for some people.

San Diego’s Samuel Livingston, decided to take Activision to court over the matter, filing a class action lawsuit against the Santa Monica-based game maker in December. Livingston accused Activision of misleading consumers, and Activision denied the allegations.

Recent court documents now confirm that the case against Activision has been dismissed.  According to a court filing, from March 26, lawyers for Activision and Livingston reached an agreement to “avoid the burden, expense and distraction of potentially protracted and complex litigation.”

As part of the agreement, Activision has promised to keep the replacement disc program in effect until at least August 31 in the US.  Also, Activision will provide all consumers who send in for the replacement disk a free faceplate for the Guitar Hero III controller (so it was part of a court settlement?  and here we thought they were just being nice for screwing up).

Livingston also agreed to release Activision from any future litigation related to the Guitar Hero III mono allegations, but what we’re curious about is that if this is a class action lawsuit what happens to the large numbers of people who might have been involved in this case?

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Suffering from mono? Here’s a free faceplate!