Harmonix has revealed that Rock Band 4 will not be coming to the PC. According to the team, the game won’t be coming to our platform due to the fear of licensed music piracy. As Harmonix noted, this is not similar to the well known software piracy excuse that every developer blames PC gamers. And to a degree, Harmonix is right.
As Harmonix told Eurogamer:
“We’re not concerned about software piracy on PC. We have and will release games for PC. In fact, last year we released A City Sleeps for PC, Mac, and Linux. As Daniel stated, the security in question is related to licensed music in the game. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have robust functionality in that area. It’s added security that’s handled by the platform holders.
In the case of more open platforms like PC, we’re responsible for that. It’s something we can build. It’s not off the table for the future, however we’re first focusing on delivering Rock Band 4 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this holiday.”
Harmonix has a point. Like it or not, that’s the truth and this is a game that relies heavily on its DLC. Releasing such a game on the PC may hurt its overall sales, as PC gamers will undoubtedly find a way to enjoy songs that were not purchased for it.
Moreover, a number of legal issues may arise due to the licensed music piracy that plagues the PC platform, meaning that music labels may ‘hurt’ or take advantage of such a thing. Keep in mind that not everyone is playing by the rules.
All in all, Harmonix has no plans releasing Rock Band 4 on the PC.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Bwahahaha. What an excuse.
It is not them, it is the ones who give them the rights to use their musics.
I didn’t say anything about the dev team. Just laughing at the whole thing.
The excuse came from the dev team, but whatever – the whole thing is silly 🙂
Music execs are lame.
And filthy rich. How are they gonna afford that third 1967 Porche or fill their yacht with gas? It’s our responsibility to give them that money.
Rock who?
He’s a former WWE wrestler and now a big Hollywood movie star.
Any music they can put into that game is already being pirated on bittorrent. Their reasoning is retarded.
So they basically said that if they release Rock Band 4 for PC, pirates would go pirating the game to hear the music in the game, instead of getting them from somewhere else.
Sounds legit.
logic doesn’t apply here mate :p
I understood that they mean that people will make and download songs instead of buying them as costly dlc.
“It’s not off the table for the future, however we’re first focusing on
delivering Rock Band 4 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One this holiday.”
That’s why. It’s just an excuse for them to squeeze the consoles dry first with endless DLCs before releasing it to the PC.
I don’t get it, why would anyone want to play lame a$$ music games when they are tons of proper games available on PC.
And what a bullshit excuse. Their are tons of games with licensed music that are available on PC. But the real reason is that majority of PC Gamers don’t give a rats a$$ about music games and they are not gullible enough to get milked for overpriced music DLC.
That and also they can’t sell DLC’s because of mods.
People were asking for Rockband on the PC?
Isn’t this the game that relies on expensive controllers shaped like instruments?
Like we care about.
Who’s this we? Don’t talk for the whole pc community.
I do care about rock band.
Good cause we’d all rather play something like rocksmith instead of this POS, i dont think anyone wanted rockband on pc anyway so its win win
so pirates won’t go to torrent or whatever to download a full album (flac version) for their favorite bands but they buy or pirate a 40GB game to pirate the songs ?
Two birds with one stone.
really expensive stone then
its worse than that, youtube has pretty much everything no need for torrents.
Suffice to say i havent bothered with music in the last 4 years, i just listen old songs in youtube every month or so.
good, so now activision can release guitar hero on PC and say, ROCK WHO? we like PC unlike them. day 1 guitar hero for me, its always been the far superior game.
“boo hoo hoo pirates will pirate all of our overpriced dlc” is basically all im hearing. does anyone even want such a crappy game on pc? just get guitar smith on pc and ACTUALLY learn to play the guitar not just hit falling notes on a plastic kids toy.
Lets see if i got this right, what they say is that they sell overpriced tracks as dlc and they are mad the few people that even play this game on pc just download them off youtube?
also i forgot i saw this yesterday and it is not the first time.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/207434-blocking-pirate-bay-doesnt-increase-legit-sales-study-finds
There are people who buy when you make it a good service like steam and itunes and people who live in poor countries who wont buy it.
So there you go.