Rock Band 4 not coming to PC due to music piracy concerns

[Scorpus]

If you were wondering why Harmonix' upcoming rhythm game Rock Band 4 is not coming to PC, it's all down to piracy. Not piracy of the game itself, however, but piracy of the songs within the game.

According to Harmonix' product manager, Daniel Sussman, there are a range of security issues with the open nature of PCs that don't sit well with music rights holders. The rights holders essentially want the songs in Rock Band 4 unaccessible to music pirates, and the closed nature of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 platforms provide this security.

Sussman does admit that the PC's security issues aren't an "unsolvable problem" - Harmonix could build a DRM platform to protect the songs on PC, and the company says this is "not off the table for the future" - but for now they are focused on bringing the game to consoles.

Music piracy isn't the only reason why Rock Band 4 won't be coming to PC. Sussman also stated that as previous Rock Band games never made it to PC, the library of songs that were available on consoles and that gamers may have purchased wouldn't be there. It's also unclear to Harmonix whether there is a market or audience for Rock Band on PC.

If there is enough demand for Rock Band on PCs, Harmonix may look to bringing the game to the platform in the future. For now, Rock Band 4 will launch solely on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 later this year.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/60904-rock-band-4-not-coming-pc-due-music.html

 

[yRaz]

So it's due to music piracy, not video game piracy? Well if we're going to be taking the moral high ground here, I think it's time I stop buying music due to drug addiction in the music industry.

 

[agb81]

Gee... I wonder how else could somebody get music on the internet. I bet those soundtracks are the only way to get the songs in the playlist. /s

 

[stewi0001]

Obviously no one has ever hacked/cracked a XboxOne or PS4. *sarcasm*

 

[Experimentongod]

Gee... I wonder how else could somebody get music on the internet. I bet those soundtracks are the only way to get the songs in the playlist. /s

Yep, I agree. This doesn't make sense when pirating music is as easy as breathing

 

[Uncle Al]

Hmmmmm ...... less noise in the world .... that's a good thing!

 

[Guest]

Gee... I wonder how else could somebody get music on the internet. I bet those soundtracks are the only way to get the songs in the playlist. /s

Obviously they'd rather have it gotten that way instead of being easily accessible through the game they agreed to share content to lol

 

[BMfan]

Now I have a good reason to sell my PC and keep the PS4.

 

[Kevin82485]

LMFAO. Oh my goodness. They've got to be kidding. Who the hell would go through the hassle of pirating the song from the game when it is way easier to pirate it off the Internet or torrent? Just shows the kind of *****s running the music industry these days.

 

[lipe123]

So what they really are saying is that its to hard/time consuming to write/port a PC version and instead lets blame piracy for everything as always.

Not that I particularly care because I don't play the rockband games but this kind of BS really shouldn't sit well with any pc owner.

 

[Bigwils1]

What a crack of ****nn **** that is what a piss poor excuse to piss on the pc owners why dont they just say microsoft and sony gave us a bunch of cash for it to be console only wankers

 

[robb213]

If someone wanted those songs that badly all they'd have to do is find a website with direct downloads/crawlers and don't even have to resort to torrent networks.

I really don't see who'd take the time to extract the music from the game when it's literally everywhere for anyone to access on the Internet...

 

[Adhmuz]

Hilarious, I almost can't get over how bad a reason that is to not release a game on PC. Do the artist responsible for the songs in GTA 5 on PC have the same concern? or any PC game ever made... The music industry deserves to be ripped off after this, what a bunch of F-ing morons. Time to find the set list of songs for the game and download it anyway, you sure Won this one music industry.

 

[Guest]

Who cares about Rock Band, come and gone.

 

[Hexic]

Well, Harmonix has now given many PC owners a good reason not to purchase their products for sure. The reasoning makes no sense, in any form of imagination.

When you're attempting to essentially do a soft-reboot of your franchise.. This sure isn't the way to drive sales. They almost deserve to flop due to pathetic, illogical reasoning such as this. Quite sad, I loved the rock band games, too..