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CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST ROCK BAND DRUM PEDALS

By Chris Bennett, Tudor Carsten, Michael R. Coburn, Sarah Dale-Harris, Pablo Guzman, Danielle (Dani) Lemon, Chris Metcalfe and David Spratley

Harmonix, MTV, EA and Viacom, the creators of the game Rock Band, are the defendants in a class action lawsuit for having allegedly shipped defective drum pedals in a scheme to cheat consumers. According to plaintiff Monte Morgan from Kansas, the drum pedal has a design defect which causes the pedal to fracture under ordinary usage. Once it fractures, the pedal becomes inoperative and the Rock Band game cannot be played in the manner it is marketed and advertised by defendants to consumers.

Plaintiffs also allege that the defendants acknowledged that the pedals were defective and that they attempted to use the defective nature of the hardware to drive the existing consumers to purchase Rock Band 2 which was released in October and which has been advertised as having an improved drum pedal.

As for warranty on the hardware, on June 26, 2008, Harmonix and EA extended Rock Band's warranty until October 1, 2008. Any new customer now has a sixty day warranty on the game's hardware.

Plaintiffs are seeking damages and an injunction.

Coverage at: GameCyte

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Full post as published by Video Game Law Blog on November 28, 2008 (boomark / email).