Publisher Electronic Arts’ licensing agreement with Rock Band developer Harmonix will cease to exist as of next week. After July 31, the mobile versions of the popular rhythm-based music series, Rock Band and Rock Band Reloaded (not pictured), will no longer be sold in the iTunes App Store.
Warning notices are already in place on both games’ App Store descriptions, where they still retail for $4.99 each, along with a library of $0.99 song packs as in-app purchases. EA also explained details of this delisting on its website, where it urges customers to back up their games to iCloud before July 31 if they want to keep playing or restore previous purchases. If the games aren’t already stored in iCloud or downloaded to a local iOS device, players will be unable to recover their data once the deadline has passed.
Harmonix retains the intellectual property rights for its games (which also includes Dance Central) as part of an agreement with its former parent company, Viacom, who sold off the studio in 2010.
We’ve reached out to Harmonix for comment, but haven’t heard back as of this writing.