Source: Eurogamer
The family of Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi have filed a €1m lawsuit against Activision over his portrayal in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
Three of Savimbi’s children claim Activision depicted their father as a “barbarian” during his appearance in the 2012 shooter, The Guardian reports.
“[He's portrayed as] a big halfwit who wants to kill everybody,” prosecution lawyer Carole Enfert explained. In reality, she continued, Savimbi had actually been a “political leader and strategist”.
Jonas Savimbi was the leader of an opposition movement against Angola’s communist-backed government (and thus had the support of the US) throughout the country’s bloody civil war that left 500,000 people dead.
He appears in Black Ops 2 during the level Pyrrhic Victory, where he encourages his troops to kill as many opponents as possible, while waving a grenade launcher.
Activision has, unsurprisingly, disagreed with the claims, and said its portrayal of Savimbi showed him to be a “good guy”.
It isn’t the first time Activision has been sued over someone’s appearance in Black Ops 2. In 2014, actual ex-Panama dictator Manuel Noriega complained he had been depicted as “the culprit of numerous fictional heinous crimes”, for which he wanted damages.
In that case, Activision sought to get the “absurd” lawsuit dismissed, and went to the lengths of hiring US Attorney and ex-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to help. A judge agreed with Activision, and the case was thrown out of court.
