Updated: Hasbro has apologised for saying Activision Blizzard had ‘lost’ the code for its Transformers games.
In a statement to VGC, Hasbro said: “To clarify, comments that suggest Transformers games have been lost were made in error.
“We apologise to Activision and regret any confusion – they’ve been great partners, and we look forward to future opportunities to work together.”
Activision PR had originally told GamesIndustry.biz it had nothing to add to the story, but a company representative on X has since confirmed they do have the code to the games.
Original Story: Toy giant Hasbro wants Activision Blizzard to put its Transformers games back on sale, but the publisher has lost them.
Activision Blizzard’s Transformers games were once available on all digital marketplaces but were pulled once Hasbro’s licensing agreement with Activision expired in 2018.
When asked by fan community website Transformer World 2005 whether games from the Xbox 360 era could be re-released following Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Hasbro revealed that the publisher had misplaced the hard drives containing them.
“When a company eats a company that eats a company, things get lost, and that’s very frustrating,” a member of the Hasbro team said.
“The hope is now that the deal is moving forward with Microsoft and Xbox that they’ll go through all of the archives and every hard drive to find it all because it’s an easy Game Pass add.”
The loss of these games impacted the development of Hasbro’s Gamer Edition Transformer line, featuring toys inspired by the games.
“We had to load up the games on older platforms because there were some deco details we couldn’t find,” Hasbro said.
Hasbro still has access to some game assets, but the company had to source games like War for Cybertron themselves. “Activision kept sending us concept art instead, which we didn’t want,” the company explained. “So we booted up an old computer and ripped them all from there.”