Marking the much-anticipated return of online play to Rock Band, Rivals mode also represents the most dramatic shift to the Rock Band meta game since the franchise’s introduction in 2007. In Rivals Mode, players band together to form crews of up to ten people to take on other crews around the world in a structured and ongoing series of uniquely themed gameplay challenges. At the beginning of each challenge, crews will be assigned to one of six tiers. When a challenge ends, the best crews will ascend to a new tier, while under-performing crews will face demotion. As crews get promoted they’ll earn badges and face stiffer competition in their quest to earn their place amongst the elite in the highest tier - Bloodstone.

Rock Band Rivals challenges are made up of two distinct gameplay elements - Weekly Challenge Songs and Spotlight Songs. Crews looking to climb the leaderboard will need to focus on both if they want to succeed. Performance in weekly challenges is determined by the overall score earned by all crew members while playing qualifying songs. For example, in the challenge “I Want to Know What Love Is,” playing songs and artists with the word “love” in them will contribute to your crew’s Rivals score for the week. Spotlight Songs are an opportunity for Rock Band’s best players to show their stuff. Here, a crew’s Rivals score is determined by the single best performance achieved by the crew as a whole for each instrument. Balanced crews featuring elite singers, guitarists, bassists and drummers will have an advantage.

Hi Friends,

After over 8 years of weekly Rock Band 4 DLC releases, we’re here to let you know that January 25 will be the last DLC release of the RB4 era. All other live services will continue as normal, including Rivals seasons, online play, and everything else. 

Working in support of the Rock Band community has been a high point in my professional life - wading through the thousands of song requests we get, working through what songs to pursue and release, it’s all hard work but also really satisfying.  

Taking a longer look back, I see the Rock Band DLC catalog as a huge achievement in persistence and commitment - over the years we’ve cleared, authored and released nearly 3,000 songs as DLC and well over 3,000 if you include all the game soundtracks. That’s wild. Many of you reading this own a good chunk of this content and we remain committed to protecting that investment - to be very clear, you can play the songs you own within Rock Band 4 for as long as you like.  

Looking ahead, the Harmonix team has been hard at work over the last two years to develop Fortnite Festival, which brings rhythm action gaming (and more) to the Fortnite ecosystem. It’s free to play, we have a rotating selection of songs that you can play (for free) anytime. If you are a fan of the rhythm game category, Fortnite Festival is the place to be; and with support for RB4 instruments coming, this is not the time to hang up your guitars just yet….  

We deliberated long and hard about how to frame the last blast of RB DLC of this era. The last two weeks will feature some tear jerkers that sum up our feelings about this moment. We thank you for your commitment to and passion for this wonderful game.  

Long Live Rock and Roll,

Daniel