The party is coming to an end for Rock Band 4 and not for a good reason
Harmonix have been crafting music games since their inception, though they did spend a few years dancing, their last major entry into the plastic music craze was Rock Band 4 and while it was not the hit the earlier entries, it still did very well and has had a long life.
Sadly that life is coming to an end as the studio have announced that next week, on January 25th, the last of the new DLC for the game will be released. Now its important to note that all online functions of the game are remaining and you will be able to buy existing DLC, they just won’t be making any new content for the game.
Why you might be asking, well its because of the dumpster fire that is Fortnite Festival, one of the new games that released last year into Fortnite. As someone who adores both the classic Guitar Hero titles and of course Rock Band, I gave the mode a try and instantly quit out. There are two reasons, the first is that the game forces you to play with other players, which is of course a major fucking problem, when you just want to enjoy playing a song.
The other reason is that the songs are randomly selected from whatever library they have, you can still select from the ones presented, but given they only provide 4 choices, if you don’t like them, then too bad. Your options at this point are quit and load back in and hope you get something nice or just play one of them, the problem is that if you quit, you have to requeue and are then forced into another match-making queue, which highlights problem number one again.
There is a letter about this change released via the Harmonix website, you can read it below, but while it tries to tell you this is a great thing, it is the complete opposite. Taking away most of the functions of Rock Band and then telling people this replacement game is just as good is an insult. It is like playing a 2d Mario game and then someone tries to convince you a flash platforming game they made is just as good, it never is.
What say you on this? Is this an issue for you or did you give up on Rock Band years ago? Either way, the letter is below.
Hi Friends,
After over 8 years of weekly Rock Band 4 DLC releases, we’re here to let you know that January 25 will be the last DLC release of the RB4 era. All other live services will continue as normal, including Rivals seasons, online play, and everything else.
Working in support of the Rock Band community has been a high point in my professional life - wading through the thousands of song requests we get, working through what songs to pursue and release, it’s all hard work but also really satisfying.
Taking a longer look back, I see the Rock Band DLC catalog as a huge achievement in persistence and commitment - over the years we’ve cleared, authored and released nearly 3,000 songs as DLC and well over 3,000 if you include all the game soundtracks. That’s wild. Many of you reading this own a good chunk of this content and we remain committed to protecting that investment - to be very clear, you can play the songs you own within Rock Band 4 for as long as you like.
Looking ahead, the Harmonix team has been hard at work over the last two years to develop Fortnite Festival, which brings rhythm action gaming (and more) to the Fortnite ecosystem. It’s free to play, we have a rotating selection of songs that you can play (for free) anytime. If you are a fan of the rhythm game category, Fortnite Festival is the place to be; and with support for RB4 instruments coming, this is not the time to hang up your guitars just yet….
We deliberated long and hard about how to frame the last blast of RB DLC of this era. The last two weeks will feature some tear jerkers that sum up our feelings about this moment. We thank you for your commitment to and passion for this wonderful game.
Long Live Rock and Roll,
Daniel
