Harmonix is trying to get Rock Band 4 on PC. They're doing so using the new crowd-funding service Fig. They also want to offer PC gamers a way to get their hands on every piece of DLC they released for the game so far for a single payment. The only problem is that they're asking for $2,500.
Engadget caught wind of the news from a recent update that Harmonix made over on their official Fig site, where they announced that they have an option available for backers to get every piece of DLC available for Rock Band 4 for the backing price of $2,500. For the home consoles it's reported that the game already has more than 2,000 songs available at $2 each. So technically, you're getting a half-off deal for all of the DLC, despite the fact that $2,500 is pretty steep.
One thing that's a little bit worrisome about this news is that while Xbox and PlayStation owners already have access to the archive to download the DLC songs as they see fit, the main issue is that PC gamers aren't going to be guaranteed all 2,000 songs. You see, Harmonix has to license each song or reapply for a publishing license for the songs on a quarterly basis, so $2,500 does not necessarily guarantee that you will get every song in the archive.
In fact, Harmonix mentions on the update page that licensing renewals for Rock Band games are not always a surefire thing, stating...
we periodically need to renew licenses for our DLC songs, and not every song can be renewed. This usually only affects a few songs each quarter [...], and so it’s likely that some songs, although available for Rock Band 4 today, will expire prior to launch and will not be available when we fulfill this new Backer Tier.
It's hard to get inspired with confidence about this particular initiative when there's no guarantee that what you're paying for will actually be delivered. In a way, it's no different than so many other crowd-funding initiatives out there where you're paying into the development of a concept that may or may not ever come to full fruition.
In this case, Rock Band 4 being ported to PC doesn't seem like such a difficult task, but the $1.5 million crowd-funding goal and the fact that paying into the project as a backer at the $2,500 tier doesn't necessarily guarantee access to all the content kind of makes it difficult to put a lot of confidence into the Fig project.
At the moment, the PC version of Rock Band 4 will require $1 million more to complete the task. Being only a third of the way through funding with 11 days left on the clock, as of the writing of this article, makes it look like it's going to be a close shave for Harmonix gathering funds to bring the port to life.
You can learn more about the crowd-funding on Fig by visiting the official website. They haven't ironed out an exact ship date for Rock Band 4 but if they get funded it's likely to arrive on PC sometime in the fourth quarter of 2016.
