Zenimax being Sued for "Morally Indefenseable" Fallout 4 Ads

Remember this old Fallout 4 TV ad?



Seems pretty straightforward, right? Doesn't show gameplay or much in the way of specifics about the game. Heck, it's more of a teaser than anything else, which is all it needs to be because it's friggin' Fallout 4, all it has to do is make people aware it exists and they'll go and buy it. But what matters here isn't the ad itself, strictly speaking: it's the music. That's "The Wanderer," performed by Dion DiMucci, a musician from the '60s. And he finds the above ad so repulsive that he's suing Zenimax for using his song in it, which is causing 'irreparable injury' to his brand.

As a direct and proximate of Defendant’s actions, Plaintiff has been damaged. In addition to the loss of the fee which Plaintiff had the right to charge for the use of his performance in commercial advertisements, he lost his right to refuse consent.
 
Defendant’s Commercials were objectionable because they featured repeated homicides in a dark, dystopian landscape, where violence is glorified as sport. The killings and physical violence were not to protect innocent life, but instead were repugnant and morally indefensible images designed to appeal to young consumers.
 
In The Wanderer, Dion gives life to the story of a sad young man who wanders from town to town, not having found himself or the capacity for an enduring relationship. The song describes isolation during coming of age.
 
Without Plaintiff’s consent, Defendants dubbed The Wanderer into commercials in which the protagonist, a wanderer, roams from one location to the next, armed and hunting for victims to slaughter. Defendant’s Commercials have no redeeming value, they simply entice young people to buy a videogame by glorifying homicide, making the infliction of harm appear appealing, if not also satisfying.

While Bethesda didn't use the song illegally, the singer has sold the general rights of his music to Universal a while ago, he's claiming that the content of the ad itself is so disgusting (again, the ad above) that he would have never agreed to use his music for it in the first place as it distorts his original intention. Later in his suit claim, he even says that had he known, he would have offered to help Bethesda re-shape the ad to something less disgusting if they were dead set on using his music.

Typically, when we report on lawsuits, it seems the source of the problem is greed on one person's end. In this case, though, it seems like an odd revival of the old "All videogames are violent killing fantasies" trope I kind of assumed we'd gotten past. I'm pretty sure DiMucci simply just assumes that since you're walking around with an AK-47, and it's a video game, you must be hunting down the innocent for needless slaughter.

Or, he knows exactly what he's doing, because technically in Fallout 4 you can hunt innocents for slaughter and turn death into a sport. But I wouldn't say that's represented in the add.

Bethesda, nor Zenimax, have commented on the issue yet.