Long gone from the retail side of things, Harmonix’s Rock Band has nevertheless lived on for the past few years thanks to the studio’s maintenance of the Rock Band Network, the online community where people could buy, create and share music. Sadly, that service is now winding down.
In a post on its community forums, Harmonix say:
Sadly, since the official Harmonix DLC pipeline closed on 4/2/2013, RBN has been plagued with technical issues. Some of those problems were server side here at Harmonix, while others were entirely outside of our control. At this point, with Harmonix resources devoted to several other titles in development, we’re no longer able to operate RBN with the kind of consistency that it deserves. As a result, we will no longer be taking any submissions or releasing new content through RBN.
It’s a sad day for the Rock Band community, who thanks to the RBN have kept the game going long after people had consigned Guitar Hero to the dustbin of history.
One bright spot is that the RBN isn’t being instantly shut down. It’s just not going to be added to or maintained any longer. For now, anything already on there will still be able to be bought, so if you’ve got some plastic instruments still lying around and want to say goodbye, you should get on it.
ROCK BAND NETWORK – OFFICIAL SUNSETTING ANNOUNCEMENT [Harmonix]
Comments
4 responses to “Rock Band Is Finally Dying”
I’m just getting back on the rockbandwagon after several years off due to noise restrictions at my last apartment. I’ve just imported a new set of rb2 drums (my god they’re hard to find!) and I’m picking up an Xbox 360 so I can boot up my live account with all of my old songs.
I can’t imagine the size of the library available these days, but I hope it hangs on for a while longer!
My family will be totally into it this Christmas!
Its spirit lives on in Rocksmith 2014, which has had me hooked for nearly a year now. Don’t think I could ever go back to plastic instruments now, but Rock Band and Guitar Hero gave me a placebo for the saxophone I’d not been able to take with me when I moved to go to uni, expanded my musical.
Thankyou, RB, for those four years from 2008 to 2012 in which you held my sanity together just long enough for me to finish my degree. Specifically, thankyou RB3, for telling me that learning guitar wasn’t some impossible, monumental task, and paving the way for the development of more advanced teaching tools.
This…is actually really sad. I recently bought a new set of drums in the hope that one day, the Rock Band Network would finally resume its regular releases. Hearing this is, honestly, kind of emotional.
But, there’s still hope! Harmonix haven’t ruled out Rock Band 4, so hopefully someday, we’ll all be shredding plastic guitars, and banging plastic drums, and straining our voices to Queen once again.
…Right?
At least Konami is still making GitaDora right? xD
To be honest I thought rockband died years ago with guitar hero.