Epic buys Guitar Hero developer Harmonix to produce "musical journeys and gameplay" for Fortnite

Fortnite will get "musical journeys and gameplay" from the studio behind Rock Band and Dance Central, as Epic Games has officially acquired Harmonix.

Epic announced the purchase in a post to its official blog, saying that it plans to collaborate closely with the studio to "reimagine how music is experienced, created, and distributed." While it sounds like its future work will be focused on bringing new ways to play with music to Fortnite and potentially other Epic creations, Harmonix will also keep making more Rock Band 4 DLC and putting on Fuser events.

"Music is already bringing millions of people together in Fortnite, from our emotes to global concerts and events,” Epic Games VP of game development Alain Tascan said in Epic's announcement. “Together with the Harmonix team we will transform how players experience music, going from passive listeners to active participants.”

Harmonix was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1995 as an independent video game studio solely dedicated to music-centric games, though it was later bought and sold by MTV Games parent company Viacom.

Harmonix is almost single-handedly responsible for the proliferation of plastic instruments around the world as the creator of both Guitar Hero, which was later continued by Activision's internal studios, and Rock Band. We'll have to wait and see how its next chapter as a developer will play out in Fortnite.

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