In the past few years Activision have stopped making console games based on licensed IPs , concentrating on Call of Duty, Destiny, and, well that’s about it.
It has now been confirmed that their deal with Hasbro to create games based on Transformers has now expired with Fall and War of Cybertron, Transformers: Devastation, and games based on the Michael Bay movies all removed from digital stores.
The only active Transformers games at the moment are Transformers: Forged to Fight on mobile (which is quite good and is just begging for Netherealm to port it consoles as a proper beat ’em up), and a free-to-play title only available in China.
Source: IGN
da_siz
There is another transformers game on mobile platform – Transformers Earth wars
Its very good, however it does push you to spend money to advance..
homerjnick
So…like other games that have had their license expire can you still download this game if you bought it from the PS Store?
Because other games you CANNOT…it may appear in your download list but you can’t re-download it.
This is the whole issue with digital games…you don’t own it…you are, in effect, renting it and if it is removed from the store and you need to re-download it you can’t and you lose it…and yu can’t get your money back.
It’s a rip off.
MrYd
You CAN download them though. It’s a pain to find them in the download list on the PS3 or the web store, but a lot easier on the PS4. But you can always download them if you own them. Ok, there was the case of that weird PT thing, but apart from that you can.
homerjnick
You can’t…it will be a demo or it won’t be unlocked.
Try downloading TMNT or The Simpson Arcade…you can from your download list but you can’t unlock them to play because they have been removed.
MrYd
In both those cases, the game and the unlock key are available to download.
homerjnick
Sigh…actually try and download the key…it errors.
homerjnick
Let’s be clear about this…if a game is REMOVED from the store it is NOT removed from being “purchased” only..it is removed even if you have purchased it.
Both TMNT and The Simpsons Arcade are in my Download List but I can’t ever download the full game because it has been removed from the store due to the license agreement between Sony and the developer.
If a game is removed from the store you can never download it again…that is what is meant by “removing it from the store”.
Purchase is irrelevent.
I know this becausr I had to format my PS3 a few years ago, tried to get both games I mention re-downloaded…couldn’t…called Sony and they told me that the game being removed means it was gone forever even if it appears in my download list.
The demos still work…
leeroye
This has never made sense to be. Surely if you licence a product for a game it would be licenced for that version of the game, not a limited time.
MrYd
That would depend on the terms you agree to when negotiating the licence, and how much you want to spend on it. It could be 1 game, on 1 platform, and only allowed to sell it for a couple of years (which would be the cheapest option), or 1 game on all current platforms, and you can sell it forever, and port it to anything else in the future. Which would be expensive.
Or in this case, some number of games (could be fixed by the contract, or just the practicalities of making and releasing them) over some number of years. Presumably 10 years, as that’s a nice round number and it looks like their first one was in 2007. Once that’s up, they’d have to negotiate another contract to keep selling those old games they probably aren’t selling many of now, or make new ones (which they obviously don’t want to do).
So it’s all down to paying the least amount of money and hoping they can make enough money to cover the licence and development costs. Nobody really loses out if the licence expires. Lost sales are probably non-existent by now, and anyone who bought the games can still play them.