The Official Rock Band Discussion Thread - Page 413

I thought we'd make it to fall at least. Oh well, it's a sad day.

It's the end of an era.

Rock Band is dead. Long live Rock Band.

here's an interesting article on what happened with Harmonix and Viacom:

http://www.donerlaw.com/client-alerts/?p=190

excerpts (see link for full text):

Harmonix is one of the companies behind such videogame franchises as Guitar Hero and Rock Band, iconic properties of the first decade of this century. Viacom wanted to be in that space and, in September 2006, it bought Harmonix for $175 million in cash plus an earn-out for the years 2007 and 2008. For each of those years, the earn-out formula was gross sales of Harmonix’s games, less manufacturing and sales costs, less a flat $45 million; then 3.5 times the remainder [2].

In September 2008, Viacom paid $150 million as the earn-out for 2007, the first earn-out year. In calculating the first year earn-out, Viacom didn’t deduct the costs of goods that were unsold at year-end. At the time of this earn-out payment, Viacom, per evidence in the case, was “delighted to have Harmonix ‘in the family’ and thrilled with the progress of the Rock Band franchise.” But that month, Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy. Soon, the economy was in a tailspin. Had Viacom overpaid?

In March 2010, Viacom delivered to Harmonix a final earn-out statement for 2008 which, despite some $768 million in sales, showed no earn-out due. In preparing this statement, Viacom deducted not only cost of goods sold, but also the cost of unsold goods at year-end 2008.

Harmonix objected to the 2007 and 2008 earn-out calculations, and the parties, pursuant to their underlying agreement, proceeded to arbitration. In the arbitration, Viacom not only argued for deduction of costs of unsold year-end inventory but, in a variant of that position, argued that it was entitled to deduct an inventory write-down for 2008. Viacom pointed to an inventory write-down in its corporate financial statements, and claimed the right to make a parallel write-down in the earn-out statement.

In a December 2011 award, the arbitrators, siding with Harmonix, rejected both arguments, and determined the 2008 earn-out to be $298.8 million. In another part of the arbitrators’ decision which wasn’t challenged in court, the arbitrators added $84.4 million to the $150 million earn-out previously paid for 2007.

The total price Viacom paid for Harmonix, including upfront cash and earn-outs, was over $708 million. There may have been other costs as well.

Yes, Viacom apparently overpaid. The earn-out was cranked up to eleven! (See This is Spinal Tap!) Within a few years of the sale, Guitar Hero and Rock Band were (excuse the puns) played out, and Viacom ultimately sold the company back to the founders, reportedly for a song . . . plus a spot of sympathy from the Taxman [3].


And then to add insult to injury:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-13/viacom-ordered-to-give-up-claims-to-harmonix-deal-funds.html

excerpts:

Viacom Inc. (VIAB), owner of MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, must allow $12 million to be paid to former investors in Harmonix Music Systems Inc., maker of the video game “Rock Band,” as part of a buyout, a judge ruled.

Viacom sought access to the $12 million to indemnify the media conglomerate for the costs of defending patent- infringement lawsuits over the game, in which players assume the identity of rock stars and perform for crowds. The purchase agreement set aside the funds in case problems with the deal cropped up, Strine said.

Harmonix officials never agreed to indemnify Viacom “against losses arising out of infringements of intellectual property rights that took place at the time of Rock Band’s publication in 2007,” Strine said in his 21-page decision.

As part of the 2006 buyout agreement, Viacom and Harmonix executives agreed to set aside $12 million to indemnify Viacom for “losses arising out of breach of representations and warranties made by Harmonix,” Strine noted in his ruling.

The money was to be held in escrow for 18 months and if Viacom didn’t lodge legitimate indemnification claims, it would be dispersed to Harmonix’s former stockholders, the judge said.

Viacom officials requested indemnification for losses tied to defending patent claims over Rock Band, which was still in development when Harmonix was acquired, Strine said. Company officials said they paid out $28 million in legal fees defending against intellectual-property claims over the game, the judge said.

Viacom hired lawyers to defend the company against claims by companies such as Activision Blizzard (ATVI) Inc., the largest video-game publisher, Konami Digital Entertainment Co. (9766) and Gibson Guitar Corp. over the game.

Gibson, the closely held maker of B.B. King’s “Lucille” and Jimmy Page’s “Les Paul” guitars, sued Viacom and Harmonix in 2008. Nashville-based Gibson claimed the video game infringed a patent covering a way of using a musical instrument to take part in a simulated concert.

Representatives of Harmonix’s former stockholders refused to honor the indemnification request, saying it wasn’t based on losses covered by the acquisition agreement.
When Viacom officials refused to agree to allow the $12 million to be paid to ex-Harmonix investors, lawyers for the shareholders sued in Delaware.

Pretty sad, I haven't played much lately but still enjoy when I do.

The preview video: (Click to show)
Yet another week full of stuff I never heard of. At least I've heard of two of the bands . Still seems like a bit of a waste of one of a small handful of remaining weeks of new stuff.

It does include two of the promised "handful of artists who have not yet appeared in Rock Band", Queensrÿche and The Flys.

I was really hoping we'd go out with a bang more like the Aerosmith surprise than with a whimper of whatever dregs are left to release. Oh well, I'll still be playing and enjoying Rockband as long as I have a working 360 and working controllers. I just did the ESL3 , finally, yesterday.

Nothing earth shattering, and probably the most boring Queensryche track they could come up with, seriously Mindcrime or Queen of the Reich is what people were clamoring for. Or even half the other crap on Empire.

The preview clip... (Click to show)
A measly offering, but both good old pop hits which I will buy. "Slouching towards Bethlehem...".

Wow they are really going out with a bang

You can see a preview video in their blog post, here.

Of course the very last pack of DLC would be from a band that I'd never heard of (before it was leaked a couple of days back) and whose music I don't particularly care for. How anticlimatic.

On a bright note, they apparently revealed the final song, to be released on April 2nd: it's "American Pie" with its famous lyric, "...the day the music died". I can't think of any song I'd have preferred .

Hopefully they have more than just American Pie lined up for the 2nd. but seriously, Chevelle being the second to last week I don't have very bright hopes.

They've told us that there is only one song coming on the 2nd, their "swan song" so to speak . They almost achieved a perfect countdown over the past 6 weeks: "6 tracks (Aerosmith), 5 tracks (Valentine's Day), 4 tracks (singles for Staind x2, Flys, and Queensrhyche), 3 tracks (Chevelle), 2 tracks (Toto and Oingo Boingo), and 1 track ('American Pie')". (I quote that because it was from a post on the rockband.com forums by Harmonix community relations guy Aaron Trites, aka HMXhenry). For whatever reasons 2 tracks and 3 tracks were switched.

I don't keep up with the RB boards anymore. Just sad. On the bright side I can rediscover everything with my son again soon.

IRONY! I just played RB with my kids for the first time in a year, and we had a blast. I moved a year back, and really haven't had much free time since. All of my kids are musically inclined, and we had a blast just like old times. So today I decided to see what was new on this thread, only to find out RB is going dormant.

Some questions I wonder:

1) Will RBN still have new games added? If so, then I am cool, almost everything I buy is from RBN.

2) If not, will both of the "stores" remain open for the foreseeable future?

3) Will the game software itself ever be updated? I understand they don't want to put the money into producing songs, but it would seem an XBL update might be feasible. (I'm guessing not, with nextgen consoles closing in...)

Either way, it doesn't sound like they have any plans to support NextBox... if they don't then I will be one of the people who keep a console around for years to come, just to play RB (even if it is only

The store will remain open and the RBN submission process will stay in place so RBN artists can continue to release new songs. They haven't released bug fixes in a long time (probably over a year) though there are a couple of nasty ones on the PS3 which never got fixed. There's some suggestion that they might be releasing one final patch on April 2nd along with the last song but it's just a rumor.

With RBN, there are currently 4250 items in the song library, with 4 songs left to release. They put 1279 songs (non-RBN) on sale several months back and it looks as though they'll just remain on sale for $1 each. If you enjoy the game there should be plenty to keep you busy.
Edited by michaeltscott - 3/28/13 at 6:29pm

I've been playing RB since the first one came out. This is a sad day indeed. But to ease the blow I bought a real MIM strat and fender mustang amp and gonna learn how to play for real.....

My Schecter C-1 Professional and Mustang Amp are still waiting to be mastered...

I've been singing in a band since Nov 11. Kind of when RB fizzled out for me since I had to focus more on that.

When I move to my new place I'd like to give pro guitar another go though.

I blame the amps!

Tubes FTW!!

rockband.com has been down all day on this, the last weekly DLC day. Perhaps they're installing a post-DLC look. Perhaps they lied about keeping all that up.

Or perhaps some hackers were *really* upset about the end of RB DLC, since they apparently were hacked so HMX shut down the servers to investigate.

I got the e-mail. I assume that everyone with a forum account did.

get the songs while you still can. they're about to go bye-bye...

https://www.facebook.com/RockBand/posts/10151666622150209

We wanted to give you a heads up on an upcoming change to a limited number of older legacy DLC songs currently available in the Rock Band library. When licensing songs for release for any platform, including DLC, agreements include term limits on how long the content may be sold on a given platform. This isn’t specific to Rock Band – it’s something that exists in pretty much all licensing agreements. Now, over 5 years since the release of the first batch of Rock Band DLC, we’re reaching the end of some of the earliest licenses we secured. Our Music Team has been hard at work extending these licenses to make sure that this has as small an impact on the community as possible, but there may be a very limited number of songs that will no longer be offered for new purchases in the Rock Band store.

What does this mean for you, Jane and John Q Rock Band? Read on:

• If you’ve already bought these tracks, nothing changes. Tracks that you’ve purchased/downloaded are yours. Relicensing should not affect content already in your library.
• Select legacy tracks, primarily from the earliest DLC releases, may no longer be offered for new purchase in the Rock Band Store. Again, if you’ve already purchased these tracks you should be entirely unaffected.
• If for any reason you need to redownload this content (i.e. in cases of console transfer, hard drive space management, etc.) you should be able to do so even if that content is no longer available for new purchasers in the store.

As of right now, the only content affected is Metallica Pack 01, the tracks “Ride The Lightning”, “And Justice For All”, and “Blackened”, all of which were released on November 20th, 2007. This content has already been pulled from the RB Store and will be pulled from 1st party marketplaces in the immediate future. After that, they will no longer be available for purchase.

We’ll post as more information becomes available, with relicensing updates likely coming in on a quarterly basis. We’re hard at work to minimize the impact on the RB catalog and RB community, securing extensions for an overwhelming majority of content and, most importantly, making it a priority to give you advance notice if songs are expiring and have to come down. We’ll do our best to make sure that you have one last chance to buy these legacy catalog tracks!

Rock on,
Harmonix

HMX Henry tweeted today that it will be at least 3 months minimum before any other DLC even might be pulled from the marketplace.

The rockband.com forums are back up.

so it's rolling. with expiration of each 5 year contract with whatever content is involved.

He said they are working diligently to re-license and keep everything available, and have been mostly successful so far. The only one falling off so far is Metallica.

Finally!

Not that I'm a forum junkie, but because the servers being down has prevented the keldon score site from updating from the leaderboards, and I finally wiped out the last score that my buddy had over me on any instrument on any song... but it wouldn't update.