The show ends for Rock Band Network
The day the music died.
The Rock Band Network is no more.
In a post on the Harmonix forum, the developer served notice that the Rock Band Network, which hosted user-created playable tracks for use with the game, would be closing after four years and 2121 songs.
"When the crew here at Harmonix first started developing a tool that would allow Rock Band fans, artists, and labels to put their own songs into Rock Band we had no idea that it would spawn a community that was nothing short of ravenous in their pursuit of new tracks," Harmonix said in a statement.
"Even if we had been able to anticipate the level of enthusiasm, we certainly couldn't have predicted that the RBN authors would generate a body of work that so quickly eclipsed the official Harmonix output."
Rock Band DLC stopped back in April 2013, and since then the Rock Band Network has been plagued with technical issues, Harmonix admitted.
"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," the studio explained.
"As a result, we will no longer be taking any submissions or releasing new content through RBN."
Songs previously released through RBN will continue to be available for sale, however.
In a FAQ, Harmonix asked itself: "Is this the end of Rock Band Network? Is this the end of Rock Band?"
Its answer:
In 2005 Harmonix and RedOctane released Guitar Hero and the world went nuts for games that came with plastic guitars. Harmonix rode that music game tidal wave into MTV's arms and the pair dreamt up Rock Band.
But the bottom fell out of the video game peripheral business and both Guitar Hero and Rock Band are no more. Harmonix now makes a variety of music games, including the Dance Central Kinect games.