Hasbro says Activision has lost its Transformers games on a hard drive in its offices somewhere
UPDATE: Activision denies claim, Hasbro apologises for comments "made in error".
UPDATE 02/08 11:00am: In a statement sent to Eurogamer from Activision, Hasbro has apologised for incorrectly suggesting Activision lost its Transformers games.
"To clarify, comments that suggest Transformers games have been lost were made in error," Hasbro said, via Activision. "We apologise to Activision and regret any confusion; they’ve been great partners, and we look forward to future opportunities to work together," the company continued.
Activision chief communications officer and outspoken exec Lulu Cheng Meservey also took to Twitter yesterday to deny the claim made by Hasbro, stating the company has the code - "it's not lost and never was," she posted.
ORIGINAL STORY 01/08 2:59pm: Hasbro wants to put its older Transformers video games on Xbox Game Pass but says it can't because Activision doesn't know where it's stored them.
Activision, along with its subsidiaries, was responsible for developing and publishing plenty of Transformers games over the years, including the popular Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and Transformers: Devastation.
A new game for the franchise, titled Transformers: Reactivate, is currently in development by Brink developer Splash Damage, but if you were hoping to brush up on older titles ahead of its release, you're out of luck.
It's nigh-on impossible (and expensive) to buy a copy of the Transformers games from the PS4/Xbox One era, and things get even worse the further back you go. Hasbro knows Transformers fans want to play the older titles, a spokesperson said to fansite Transformer World 2005 in an interview at San Diego Comic Con this year, but a re-release isn't on the table right now.
The games would be an "easy Game Pass add", the spokesperson said, but "apparently Activision's not sure what hard drives they're on in their building".
"When a company eats a company that eats a company things get lost, and that's very frustrating," the Hasbro spokesperson added, noting that they hoped Microsoft's Activision Blizzard acquisition deal moving towards completion, would spark the company to "go through all of the archives and every hard drive" to find the missing games.
Hasbro has some of games' assets, the spokesperson said, which were used to design a new line of Transformers based on the games. For Fall of Cybertron it had everything it needed, but Hasbro ended up ripping files for War For Cybertron from the game itself. "We had to rip it ourselves, because [Activision] could not find it - they kept sending concept art instead, which we didn't want, we need the CAD."
Any Tranformers fans wanting to play Activision's older games will have to wait and see if they can be found once Microsoft's acquisition deal for the company concludes.