Nearly 10 years ago we launched Rocksmith 2014 and set out on a journey of learning and playing guitar together, practicing old favorites, and discovering new ones along the way.
You may want to know that Ubisoft’s Rocksmith® 2014 Edition will be de-listed from Steam and other online stores after October 23rd, 2023 which is one week from this post date. This is a game that makes learning to play the guitar like Guitar Hero/Rockband, which can score you or let you slowly practice a part with scrolling fret indicators.
Now, it’s not on sale or anything (hasn’t been for a couple years), there might be W11 issues (I’m using Win 10 and Linux computers), and you’ll need a real guitar and either a mic or special USB cable to properly play the game. However, after this date you won’t be able to purchase this game anymore unless you buy from a key-seller or a retail CD copy.
Of course, Ubisoft is going to replace this 40 CAD game with a subscription service model called Rocksmith+ which is 20 CAD per month and not available on Steam. On the other hand, RS2014 works without the need of a Uplay account and can be played offline (Just press Esc twice at the signin screen).
Now there are 1555 DLCs available but they will eventually be delisted as well at some point in the future but you won’t be able to get them without the base game. The only DLC you will “need” is the Cherub Rock DLC because of…
Custom DLC is a community created mod that lets you play user-created and converted maps. By default it uses the DLC ID of Cherub Rock which is why you need it, but this is configurable if you really don’t want to spend 4 CAD. There are tens of thousands of Custom DLC songs available online so you will be hard pressed to run out of new ones to try.
I'm still not over how they ruined Rocksmith. The first two were amazing games, they improved my skills so much and I had so much fun playing them. And I kept waiting word for a Rocksmith 3, because the team behind it is amazing so I was really hopeful. But then one day without ever hearing of it being announced I stumbled upon Rocksmith+ and that's when I realized this is where the license had gone to die, in a shitty closed Ubisoft online subscription, a shadow of its former shell. I hope one day we get a better spiritual successor that isn't in the hands of such a trash company.
The music industry wants their license fees and people want to play using those special controllers. So it's prohibitively expensive to make this type of game on top of the added burden of the hardware. It's a miracle the game even exists as is.