Word for word, people.
"This is a statement regarding Nirvana, Guitar Hero and the likeness of the late Kurt Cobain.
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"
Okay, seriously, this has gone too far. We can all agree—those who were in a band with Cobain and those who just liked his music—that this Guitar Hero thing is pretty unseemly and gross, and that Cobain probably wouldn't have agreed to it if he were, y'know, alive. But don't we have better things to think about than "re-locking" a character that's just a representation (and not a great one) of a guy who's been dead for 15 years? He's now a cartoon character in a videogame—it's not like somebody's inserting his likeness into a porno movie or an advertisement for shotgun shells.