Rock Band 4 PS4 owners won't get missing DLC tracks until early December
"We acknowledge that things haven't been perfect."
The missing DLC tracks for the PlayStation 4 version of Rock Band 4 will be released early December, Harmonix has said.
We've reported a number of times on the issues surrounding Rock Band 4 on PS4 in Europe, where hundreds of DLC tracks remain unavailable to download despite being live on the North American PlayStation Store and worldwide on Xbox One.
Rock Band 4 launched on 6th October, but over half of the Legacy DLC as well as the Aerosmith DLC that launched four weeks ago are currently unavailable from the EU PlayStation Store.
The availability of Legacy DLC for Rock Band 4 was one of the game's main selling points. It means those who have bought DLC for previous Rock Band games are able to re-download them to Rock Band 4.
There are a number of problems here that are upsetting players. One, the songs can be bought from the in-game music store, but when you try to download them from the PlayStation Store, you get a "content not available" message.
Two, a lack of communication from both sides: developer Harmonix and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe.
Now, in a post on the European PlayStation Blog, Harmonix has broken that silence to insist it is working with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, which runs the European PlayStation Store, to get the tracks live.
"First off, thanks for sticking with us as we work through post-launch to address the issues you are reporting," product manager Eric Pope said.
"We acknowledge that things haven't been perfect. But I assure you we do care, very deeply, we are always listening, and we're working through resolving everything."
Pope said there are 431 songs with issues on PlayStation Store in Europe.
"We expected we'd be able to say 'it's fixed' a lot sooner than it has turned out to be," he admitted.
"While we've made progress on the North American (SCEA) side, we appreciate it may have been frustrating for players to see less movement on the SCEE side and this is due to slightly different technical processes across the stores."
SCEE operates independently of Sony Computer Entertainment America, with its own set of technical requirements, its own submission processes and its own rules and regulations and terms and conditions (SCEE operates multiple mini-stores for each territory within Europe, for example).
Sony Computer Entertainment's set-up means developers often find themselves in the position of seeing their game and DLC approved for release in one territory, but denied release in another.
The delay probably has to do with the way SCEE is set up, coupled with the sheer volume of tracks that must be worked through by staff on both sides.
Pope said SCEE has come up with a way to resolve "the lion's share" of marketplace issues in one bulk update.
"SCEE is already well underway with the process and targeting early December for release for the content to be updated in the Store," he said.