Man singing excitedly at a Rock Band premiere party
Enlarge / A couple of folks absolutely getting down to Rock Band 2 at that game's 2008 launch party at LA's Orpheum Theatre.

You can get that track for Rock Band 3 if you want to achieve a five-star expert rating. Online stores, DLC, and services for that game will be consolidated by the company.

Rock Band is one of the games that have out-of-date online services and server. More than 100 million versions of Rock Band have been sent to players on the game's server. You'll be able to play any songs you've downloaded for those titles, but not new ones. Rock Band 4 players can continue to play online.

Another cornerstone of a bygone era, Unreal will lose servers for many of its games. Epic notes that it intends to bring back online features for Unreal Tournament 3, but Gold, II, Tournament 2003 and 2004, and Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition will go dark after the January 24 date.

The bad news for fans of older or quirkier games is that they will not be able to play all of the games in the unified online service. The Linux and Mac versions of Hatoful Boyfriend are no longer available in the store. DropMix, Unreal Tournament, Rock Band Blitz, SingSpace, and the Rock Band Companion app will no longer work after January 24. There will be refunds for in-game purchases made within 180 days of today's announcement that Battle Breakers will stop work on December 30th.

The online component of a game will disappear if you can't create your own server for it. There were shutdowns for older games like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, as well as forcing owners to buy DLC before their deadline. In order to keep the game alive, the developers rebuilt a copy of the game that worked with the new server.

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Nintendo has taken down the online aspects of entire generations of games by killing server for the Wii and the DS. Some of the shutdowns were worked on by hackers.

The online shutdown of Rock Band's classic trio may affect your ability to break out the instruments and try some new tunes, but the games have served their fans for a long time. 92 percent of its streaming-only songs were unavailable due to Guitar Hero Live shutting down. A false advertising lawsuit was spawned by that move.

Rock Band's longevity and the fact that its titles are related leave us with questions. Is it possible to re- download songs you've already purchased? If you bought a song for Rock Band and then exported it to work in 4 you might be able to re-download it for a later version of the game. We've sent an email to the game company.

On January 24th, the online services of some games will be lost.

  • 1000 Tiny Claws
  • Dance Central 1-3
  • Green Day: Rock Band
  • Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess
  • Rock Band 1-3
  • The Beatles: Rock Band
  • Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars
  • Unreal Gold
  • Unreal II: The Awakening
  • Unreal Tournament 2003
  • Unreal Tournament 2004
  • Unreal Tournament 3
  • Unreal Tournament: Game of the Year Edition