Harmonix revealed that the January 25 DLC tracks for Rock Band 4 will be the final new ones added to the game.
This ends a streak of more than eight years of weekly DLC for the rhythm game. Ever since Rock Band 4 was released in October 2015, new DLC songs have been made available for purchase every week, giving the game one of the most impressive live service tails in the industry. Ultimately, Harmonix says it will have released nearly 3,000 songs as DLC for Rock Band 4 after the final content drop next week, and that live service support for seasons and online play will “continue as normal” after next week.
An explicit reason for DLC support ending isn’t given, but the blog post announcing it heavily implies that it’s because Harmonix’s full focus is now on Fortnite Festival. “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,” product manager Daniel Sussman explains in a blog post. “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.”
Harmonix was acquired by Epic Games in 2021 “to develop musical journeys and gameplay for Fortnite,” but promised not to end Rock Band 4 DLC support when that happened. Over time, online services for some Harmonix games were discontinued. The acquisition ultimately came to fruition as part of Epic Games’ Fortnite Experiences push in December 2023, which put Fortnite Festival, Rocket Racing, and Lego Fortnite on the same pedestal as Fortnite‘s battle royale modes.
Fortnite Festival was our least favorite of the experiences, with Digital Trends’ Giovanni Colantonio writing that its “modes feel like lesser imitations of Harmonix’s best games.” Still, it’s a live service that Harmonix and Epic Games plan on continuing to support, and it seems like it’s now the only place where players will be able to find new Harmonix-made music experiences in the future.
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