Fortnite commits to Rock Band-like Festival musical mode support through "2025 and beyond"

Epic Games will continue to support Fortnite Festival, the game's Rock Band-style mode developed by Harmonix, for the forseeable future.

The confirmation comes today, as Festival celebrates its first anniversary this weekend with access to play all of the mode's 285 tracks for a limited time.

Last year, Epic Games expanded Fortnite beyond its shooter origins with the arrival of Lego Fortnite, which has performed particularly well, plus Fortnite Festival and Rocket Racing - the arcade racer mode made by Rocket League studio Psyonix.

In October, Epic Games quietly announced that Rocket Racing would no longer receive regular themed content updates, and the mode currently does not offer any further cosmetic rewards to unlock.

All of Fortnite's player experiences show public play counts, and from them it's easy to see the game's main modes - Battle Royale and Zero Build - with hundreds of thousands of concurrent players. Lego Fortnite typically ranges in the tens of thousands. Fortnite Festival usually sits around 15,000 players. Rocket Racing sits in the single digit thousands.

Festival also has a clear monetisation route, with a seasonal pass that features a particular music star, plus the option to purchase music tracks to keep and play whether a song is in the mode's current rotation or not.

The mode kicked off by spotlighting The Weeknd, before subsequent seasons were headlined by genuine music giants like Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Metallica and Snoop Dogg.

"While that's officially a wrap on the first year of Fortnite Festival, the Festival roadies and stage crew are already hard at work to make 2025 and beyond even bigger," Epic Games wrote today. "That said, 2024 isn’t over just yet, and we have some surprises to help see the year out in style!"

The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and Colombian singer Karol G are getting reskinned "platinum" versions of their original skins, plus there are XP quests for playing their music in the coming days.

It's a very busy time for Fortnite, which recently launched its permanent Fortnite OG offering. This week sees the arrival of social sim Lego mode Lego Fortnite Brick Life plus the Valorant-inspired Fortnite Ballistic.