08/01/23 Update: Activision CCO Lulu Cheng Meservei said on Twitter that reports of the Transformers game loss are inaccurate: "These headlines are wrong. We have the code, it is not lost and never has been."

A Hasbro representative also confirmed to Axios' Stephen Totilo that reports that the code was lost were not entirely accurate. To clarify, comments suggesting that the Transformers game was lost were made in error,"

Totilo said. 'They have been a great partner and we look forward to the opportunity to work with them in the future.'

To be fair, the original report did not say that the old Transformers games in question were not lost forever, and it simply appeared that Activision had no idea where they were and was not interested in making a major effort to locate them. Anyway, good news for Transformers fans: Xbox boss Phil Spencer has previously said that if Microsoft is able to complete the Activision Blizzard acquisition, he would like to bring back Activision's classic games, and at least these It is reasonable to expect that some of the games would be included on that list. And if he wants to find them, I am confident they will be found.

Original story here:

Hasbro is currently flying by the seat of its pants and is about to get serious about Transformers and video games. Of course, there have been several Transformers games in the past, but they were somewhat isolated licensed titles rather than part of a grand strategy. Currently, Hasbro is planning to release a major title next year from Splash Damage, and has begun selling a Gamer Edition line of toys (featuring bots designed to look like they appear in certain video games).

This is the first time since the licensing agreement between Hasbro and Activision expired in 2018 that various Transformers titles have been removed from Steam and other digital marketplaces. These include Transformers: Devastation, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and Transformers: Devastation, developed by Platinum Games, with its colorful, clever action and great transformation gimmicks. equipped with a variety of features, were definitely a pushover.

At this year's San Diego Comic-Con, a Hasbro spokesperson answered a Q&A about these older titles from Transformers World 2005. Hasbro was asked if the Gamer Edition toys meant a re-release of these games. 'When company eats company, things get lost and it's very frustrating,' Hasbro said. Now that the deal with Microsoft and Xbox is moving forward, I hope they go through all the archives and all the hard drives and find it all. Because game paths are easy to add.

Let's stop here for a moment. It seems surprising that Activision Blizzard, one of the largest game publishers in the world for decades, does not have an easily accessible archive of the source code for their titles. We're not even talking about a particularly old game here: the release of Devastation was in 2015. That was obviously a problem, since Hasbro used secondary assets to create the toyline.

"We have CAD [3D models], but they are not colored. ." said the spokesperson.

Hasbro has several game assets, including everything from Fall of Cybertron, but it's hit and miss. 'They kept sending us concept art instead. So we started up an old computer and ripped everything off of it. We wanted to get it right and that's why we did it that way."

Activision held the Transformers license from 2006 until 2017.

Activision held the Transformers license from 2006 until it expired in 2017, shortly after which all available Transformers games were delisted. They include a great variety of movie tie-ins, various iterations of the animated series, and semi-original works.

Interestingly, there is another historical curiosity: in 1986, Activision produced the second Transformers game ever: Battle to Save the Earth (the first was Denton Design). If Hasbro wants to give these titles another chance, even if some of them are bad, that is obviously a good thing. But it certainly raises eyebrows as to how casually a publisher of Activision's size might (or might not) archive past works related to such a huge license.

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