Rock Band Devs Acquired by Epic Games to Assist on Fortnite
Harmonix, the studio known for Rock Band, has been acquired by Epic Games. The developers are to handle the expansion of musical elements in Fortnite.
- Harmonix has been acquired by Epic Games;
- The team will be expanding the musical elements in Fortnite;
- The team's older games, including Fuser and Rock Band 4 will continue to be supported;
- There are no plans to remove Harmonix's games from Steam.
Harmonix, a studio that specializes in music games has been acquired by Epic Games.. The team is known for the Rock Band and Dance Central series, as well as early installments of the Guitar Hero series.
In a press release, the developers express excitement about the future, but many of the studio's fans don't share that optimism. Harmonix's main focus is to be on expanding the music-related gameplay in Fortnite. Given how intense the development of this production is, it is quite possible that it will be a long time before the team will be able to start working on any new title. It is possible that this is the end of this developer's independent work and the team will be permanently delegated to help with Epic Games' biggest hit.
An FAQ was published on the official website of the team, which is to explain to fans what this acquisition means. We can read in it that the studio has no plans to develop new instruments for Rock Band.
Fans of Harmonix's work may be comforted by the fact that despite the takeover, the team will continue to support its older productions. There are plans for new DLCs with new songs for Rock Band 4, as well as 25th gameplay season. We will also get more events in Fuser.
Moreover, Harmonix ensures that it will not remove its games from Steam. All games available there will remain on sale and will continue to be supported. There are also no plans to close the servers of the team's remaining active projects, neither on PC nor consoles.
For Epic Games, the acquisition of Harmonix makes sense, as there has been a growing emphasis on the music layer of Fortnite for some time now. Last year, the game hosted a virtual concert by Travis Scott. It turned out to be a great success - the audience of this event exceeded 12.3 million people, and its recording on YouTube was viewed over 174 million times. This year, similar performances were organized by Ariana Grande and Kaskade. There have also been multiple gameplay events related to dance. No wonder that Epic Games wants to expand the musical gameplay in its biggest hit.
