Rock Band 4 has been getting weekly DLC updates and support from its developer Harmonix for the last 8 years since it was released in 2015.
Next week, on January 25, 2024 that support will finally be coming to an end, as Harmonix points players to Fortnite Festival if they want more, new Rock Band experiences.
All other support services for Rock Band 4 will still be active, there will still be Rivals seasons, online play, general maintenance etc., but Harmonix will no longer be adding songs to its already huge roster.
“If you are a fan of the rhythm game category, Fortnite Festival is the place to be,” said project manager at Harmonix Daniel Sussman in its blog post announcing the news.
“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.”
What’s perhaps a silver lining for Rock Band fans is that Harmonix doesn’t want you to throw out your plastic guitars and drum sets yet.
Sussman confirmed that Harmonix is working on adding support for Rock Band 4 instruments to Fortnite Festival, adding the final piece of the puzzle to make Fortnite Festival a proper successor to Rock Band.
Sussman also clarifies that this doesn’t mean players should be concerned about their own Rock Band song libraries, nothing is going away and those songs you’ve purchased are yours to play and enjoy for the foreseeable future.
“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.”
Source – [Harmonix]