So, this morning we learned that EA Mobile had sent out a popup notification to users of the original Rock Band ($4.99) for iOS effectively stating the game was shutting down at the end of the month. This naturally drew universal criticism from gamers and left me wondering one thing: why?

If EA wanted to stop the online support for the game and instead focus on the newer and better Rock Band Reloaded ($4.99), well I can understand that. But the message clearly said the game would “no longer be playable on your device” after May 31st. It seemed pretty lame to not just leave the game playable in an offline way for those who had bought it and/or spent money on the IAP songs.

Well as Polygon reports EA has responded to the situation, issuing the following statement:

“Rock Band for iOS will remain live – the in-app message users received yesterday was sent in error."
“We apologize for the confusion this caused. We’re working to clarify the issue that caused the error and will share additional information as soon as possible."

It seems highly dubious that this whole thing could have been one big accident, especially since the iOS Rock Band is listed on an EA support page as having its connected features discontinued after May 28th, and a comment on our previous post points to an EA representative confirming in a help topic on EA’s website that the game would no longer work after May 31st, but that topic has since been deleted. Perhaps their intention all along was to drop support for the online features, and the strongly worded “no longer playable on your device” message was the mistake. Either way, this reeks of damage control rather than an actual mistake.

Either way, Polygon notes that EA is looking into what caused the error in the first place, and we’ll let you know if there’s any more news on the matter. For the time being it looks like iOS Rock Band-ers will still be able to rock out on the go.

[Via Polygon]