About
Transformers: War for Cybertron is a 2010 third-person shooter built on Unreal Engine 3, telling an original story of the Autobot/Decepticon civil war on the Transformers' home planet of Cybertron before their arrival on Earth. Developed by High Moon Studios and published by Activision, it was well received for its faithful take on the Generation 1 fiction and its mix of campaign and class-based multiplayer. It was delisted at the end of 2017 after Activision's Hasbro license lapsed, and its online multiplayer servers were shut down in 2020, leaving the single-player campaign as the main draw.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- TWFC.exe
- Needs files
- none beyond the binary
Proton
- Version
- GE-Proton
- Winetricks
- —
- ProtonDB
- ProtonDB Gold runs perfectly after tweaks
⚙ Setup notes
Game: 2010 High Moon Studios / Activision third-person shooter (UE3).
DRM: Delisted Dec 2017 when Activision's Hasbro license lapsed — bring your own copy.
Install: Real executable is Binaries/TWFC.exe. Bundled PhysX redist (in the game's redist/ folder) must be present for the game to launch; Proton normally installs it on first run.
Proton: Runs well on Deck under GE-Proton.
GFWL: Uses Games for Windows Live (GFWL) — single-player works without signing in; GFWL overlay/save can prompt, just cancel/skip it.
Display: If gaming-mode cutscenes/fullscreen flicker, run the game in windowed mode (alt+enter toggles fullscreen; alt-tab out and back to clear a stuck cutscene).
The one thing to know
Supply your own copy: Delisted (lapsed Hasbro license) — configuration only, no links.
Controller: Native controller input works on Deck out of the box (console-origin third-person shooter), but the game shows keyboard button prompts by default; an optional community gamepad-UI mod (GameBanana / Nexus) adds proper controller glyphs.
GFWL: Present but campaign plays fine without an account.
Multiplayer: Official multiplayer master server was shut down April 2020 (a community server-restore setup exists, Steam copy required); the single-player campaign is the draw.
ProtonDB: Tier is *gold* but on a small/low-confidence sample (~6 reports, best-reported platinum, trending gold) — treat as promising-but-unconfirmed until tested.
Display: Use windowed mode in gaming mode to avoid fullscreen/cutscene flicker.
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options, Proton version)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.