Rock Band 4 was never released on PC. Developer Harmonix said in 2015 that it was unsure if there would be a large enough audience for the game on PC, and in 2016 it launched a crowdfunding campaign for a PC version, but its concerns were validated when it barely reached half of its $1.5 million goal The fact that it barely reached half of its $1.5 million goal proved its fears were justified. That's because Harmonix announced today that it will end Rock Band 4's DLC release on January 25.

Harmonix has released many songs for Rock Band 4 over the years: nearly 3,000, more than 3,000 if you include the game's soundtrack. To be clear, these songs are not going away: product manager Daniel Sussman said that the Rock Band 4 live service will continue as usual and that "you can play as many songs you own within Rock Band 4 as you want.

However, Harmonix was acquired by Epic Games in November 2021, and the studio has a vision to "work with Epic to create a musical journey and gameplay for Fortnite," which is apparently the focus these days.

"The Harmonix team has been hard at work for the past two years on Fortnite Festival, which will bring rhythm-action games (and more) to the Fortnite ecosystem," Sussman wrote." The music is free to play and is selected in rotation of songs that can be played (for free) at any time. If you are a fan of the rhythm game category, Fortnite Festival is the perfect place for you." With support for RB4 instruments on the horizon, it's not too early to give up your guitar."

So: Rock Band 4 is (partly) dead and Fortnite is (partly) bad. At the same time, eight years is a hell of a long time: we've seen so many games put out to pasture much sooner than that; "Fortnite fest" or not, it's understandable that Harmonix wants to move on to other games.

Fortnite Festival "relies heavily on the Rock Band formula," in the words of featured producer Mollie Taylor, who spent time with the game in 2023, but lacks the magic of the original at this point.

"It's a great introduction to rhythm games for the casual player who may not have touched the others, especially those who missed out on the "Rock Band/Guitar Hero" era, but it's very bare-bones for a Harmonix production," she wrote. A little more polish would make it a little easier to look at classic F2P monetization, and maybe a little more extravagant, too." Until then, I think dancing in the lobby will be the default for a while"

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One of her main complaints was the lack of support for controllers disguised as instruments: after all, it's not much fun to rock out with a mouse and keyboard. With the decision to support instrument controllers, perhaps "Fortnite Festival" will replace Epic and Harmonix's intended "Rock Band". If not, there was never a Rock Band 4 anyway, so nothing has really changed in that regard. [This isn't the first time Epic has turned a genre-specific developer toward Fortnite. It's clear that Fortnite is at the center of the "metaverse" dream.