Gameplay from cancelled Transformers Reactivate leaks and it looks amazing

Footage from a cancelled Transformers game has emerged, featuring Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and more in a third-person shooter.

Transformers games haven’t necessarily been in short supply over the years, but it’s been a long time since fans had a genuinely great one. 

The last few games were low-budget affairs, like 2024’s racer Transformers: Galactic Trials and 2023’s Transformers: Earthspark – Expedition, which are a far cry from the series’ gaming peak in 2010’s War For Cybertron and its successor Fall Of Cybertron. 

There was some hope, though, that Transformers Reactivate, from UK developer Splash Damage (Brink, Gears Tactics), would be a return to form. It was announced at The Game Awards in 2022, but unfortunately the online multiplayer title was cancelled in January 2025. 

We never saw any footage from the game, outside of a vague cinematic trailer, but now gameplay has emerged thanks to YouTuber TFR Archive. 

The gameplay clip was supposedly created sometime after October 2024, and was allegedly used as a pitch to potential investors after Tencent pulled funding. 

While Transformers Reactivate was initially a live service game, it apparently pivoted course during development to feature a single-player story campaign with optional online co-op. 

The footage is from that revamped build, and it shows the likes of Optimus Prime (voiced by Jon Bailey, doing an impression of the late, lamented Peter Cullen) and Bumblebee engaged in combat. The plot involves them teaming up with Megatron and his band of Decepticons to fight an alien race called the Legion (invented for the game, unless it’s meant to be a reference to an obscure part of Japanese Transformers lore).

While it’s only a brief snippet, it looks like a promising co-op shooter, something in a similar vein to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 – only if you could also transform into cars. 

YouTuber TFR Archive is planning to release a documentary about the game’s seven-year development in the future, and is calling for contributions via their Twitter and Bluesky. 

Following its cancellation, it’s unclear if Hasbro has any intention of investing in another major Transformers game. Over recent years, it has paired up with publisher Outright Games for various low-budget games, but based on the existence of Transformers Reactivate, it seems open to working with other companies. Or at least it was.

Earlier in the year, Hasbro made a big fuss about getting more into game development and publishing, with plans to spend $1 billion on traditional console and PC games – and pointedly not live service titles.

They’ve blown hot and cold on being an active part of the games industry for decades, but their most recent efforts began in 2018, with the founding of six studios and the publishing of Larian Studio’s Baldur’s Gate 3.

Unfortunately, their plans seemed to collapse almost as soon as they announced them, with multiple unspecific games being cancelled. Although Exodus and Warlock: Dungeons & Dragons are still going ahead, nothing else seems to have survived from their original plans, including any sign of a new big-budget Transformers game.

For many, the chance to play War For Cybertron on modern platforms would be enough, but Activision’s spree of Transformers’ games have been delisted for some time due to expired licenses. There was some evidence to suggest they might be re-released in 2024, but that hasn’t yet come to fruition. 

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