'Rock Band 4' Leaderboards to be Wiped With January Update

Leaderboards to be reset due to exploits.

Today, Harmonix has explained via blog post that they'll be updating 'Rock Band 4' in January, bringing with it new clothing options for characters, enhancements to one of the game modes (that they've left unspecified for now), and most notably, some changes to the game's netcode that will lead to far more accurate leaderboard scores overall.

According to 'Rock Band 4' Lead Designer Matt Derby and Creative Lead for the Features Team Helen McWilliams, the game has been plagued by exploits and bugs that affected global leaderboards rather dramatically, and the studio is now focused on ironing those issues out. Unfortunately, this comes as something of a double-edged sword, as Harmonix believes the best solution to these issues requires all existing leaderboards to be wiped due to their curent inaccuracies.

We know that many of you have worked hard to climb the leaderboards, and that wiping your scores sucks. That said, these changes will ensure that in the future, you won’t be unseated from the top spot by someone using an exploit. And if we do discover an issue down the road, we can address it much more quickly and easily.

We also want to make sure we’re absolutely clear that we’re only wiping the high scores you’ve posted to leaderboards. Those of you who are racking up Full Combos won’t lose that data on your local saves. You’ll also hold on to the ‘song plays’ stat visible on the Player Stats screen. As far as your song library goes, it’ll continue to display the accuracy and star count for your highest-scoring performances to date. These stats will be replaced the first time you re-play each song after the update goes live.

While it's definitely nice to see that the studio is dedicated to improving 'Rock Band 4', as many agreed that it shipped feeling somewhat rushed and incomplete, it's a shame that all existing leaderboards have to be reset. Regardless, it's good to see that issues such as these are going to be addressed moving forward, and here's hoping that this is the last time something this drastic will have to be done.

Source: Harmonix