For about 1 year my two sons and I played Rock Band, mostly The Beatles, everyday when they came home from school. At least an hour each day. We played other versions of Rock Band, but the Beatles was easily our favorite.
It directly led one of them to learn the piano and eventually get a master’s degree in composing, and the other to enjoy playing in bands and performing in musical theatre.
It should not be legal for a product such as this to just cease existing due to an agreement between IP owners ending.
It’s like Disney saying “We agree you can make this Mickey Mouse game using our characters, but it can only be sold for 2 years.” Fucking why?
“Because in 2 years the value of the product might be higher and we expect to always be paid more, regardless of the current deal we are making today.”
~Disney, since it was established as a business
Makes sense they bought Star Wars, so they can legally say “I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.”[User was moused for this comment]
Uh oh. You quoted a Disney movie. Prepare to be litigated.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this…
[Jawa noises]
Except if you bought the game you still own a copy, they’re just not allowed to sell new copies.
There are a bunch of Marvel games that are exactly like this.
Somewhat related. I tried to watch Guava Island, which was apparently only made available for Amazon for a limited time, then it just disappeared.
I think it should be legal to download or stream any of that stuff that’s no longer available.
It’s certainly ethical, if not legal.
You could make a good argument in court, too. Hard to show damages when there’s no possibility of profit because you’re not selling it.
That’s actually a very bad argument in court. Taking things off the market to drive scarcity and boost sales at a later date is a normal and common business tactic. See: the McRib, Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and the Disney Vault.
I think there’s a difference between unavailable and limited availability.
There are some old games that may never come back. In many cases, there’s no agreed owner. Imagine if something became public domain after a short period of no use (5 years, 10 years maybe).
It doesn’t stop existing, you just can’t buy it… Not great but not unreasonable.
Wouldn’t the solution just end up screwing artists who have to give up their song in perpetuity? You can have those buy pay way more
Now’s a good opportunity to promote Clone Hero
YARG as well
It’ll never be quite the same without the master tracks.
For customs? Yeah. But pretty much every master used in the RB or GH games have been ripped and are available for use there too
I’m sad I never got this to fully work with my Td 17
What’s not working? If any amount of midi is being picked up then you may need to remap, otherwise you might need drivers for the usb, or need to use a hardware usb midi box instead of usb
I have so many good memories of playing Rock Band in college. I just picked this up for PS4 for like $10, but it looks like the instruments are going to cost an arm and a leg…
Just like being in a real rock band!
And this is why disc games should never go away.
Don’t worry, the games industry has you covered on that now. They just release games that are broken or half-finished without the day 1 patch, but then allowing it to update removes all of the licensed content.
The digital download isn’t going away either (yet).
What like the songs or Kindle books that can be removed from your library next time your computer logs onto the Internet due to a licensing dispute?
With more games and systems requiring online access every X number of days, downloads don’t mean shit.
Too bad PS4 emulation isn’t quite there yet. You can, however, pirate the fuck out of the earlier games, DLC and all. Truly a better way to play, cause that DLC was hella expensive.
Rock Band 4 does get in-game now on ShadPS4, but it’s a long ways off from playable.
https://github.com/shadps4-compatibility/shadps4-game-compatibility/issues/1165
End of an era 🥲
Obligatory plug: Rock Band 3 Deluxe mod, Rock Band 4 Deluxe mod
Shoutout to the Milohax teamThis is one of the weird aspects of games that seems to make no sense because of archaic laws that never entered the 20th century, nevermind the 21st. It seems to be about manufacturing new copies of the already made game, not selling them. So it only affects digital sales, I would assume because of their “creation” on a new sale, every physical game copy was already manufactured and out there, nothing changes there.
So uh, happy… anniversary… I guess?
Man, this sucks. I haven’t played any games like this in a while (i legit have my guitar hero mounted on the wall) but it sucks to see something like this going away
I’ve heard good things about YARG (yet another rhythm game). Basically an open source rock band clone on PC.
There’s also Clone Hero
Frets on Fire is the one I knew of back when Guitar hero was at its peak
And the songs will start to become unavailable to purchase over the next 9 years. I guess it’s a good reminder for me to buy all the songs I want to get.
