Classic Transformers games are apparently lost on a hard drive somewhere in Activision, as Hasbro urges a return on Game Pass

rockpapershotgun.com:

Transformers owners Hasbro have said they would like to see older video games based on the beloved toy franchise to make a return - except those games are lost somewhere on a hard drive inside Activision.

Acitivison was responsible for publishing Transformers games on PC and consoles for over a decade from 2006 to 2017, putting out both direct movie tie-ins like the imaginatively-titled Transformers: The Game and adaptations of Michael Bay’s two live-action sequels, Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, as well as original Transformers games.

Those original games are definitely the more interesting potential here, including 2010’s War for Cybertron and its 2012 sequel Fall of Cybertron, which I remember having good, B-game fun with at the time. (Please nobody ruin my definitely-accurate memories.) The two games were followed by another sequel, Rise of the Dark Spark, which combined the video games’ lore with the events of the Michael Bay movies.

Activision’s last Transformers game was 2015’s Devastation, a cel-shaded hack-and-slash from Bayonetta studio PlatinumGames, of all developers. The cel-shaded look draws from the original Transformers cartoons rather than the industrial grimdark Bay films, with the game also seeing the return of original voice actors from the TV show.

After Activision’s licensing deal expired with Hasbro in 2017, all of the publisher’s Transformers games were pulled from sale on digital stores, making it impossible to play them today through convenient, legitimate means unless you already own a disc and play via Xbox backwards compatibility.

That’s something that even Hasbro would like to change, with the team telling Transformer fansite Transformer World 2005 that they would