Top Team Sports Games on Steam Are Overpriced, Rarely On-Sale

I have been following the top team sports games on Steam and I have noticed how all of them are grossly overpriced, especially the EA Sports games. They are rarely on-sale while many other popular games under the other categories like Action and Role-Playing including War of Rights ($29.99 and now $14.99 through October 6) and Deadliest Catch: The Game ($19.99 and now on-sale for only $1.99 through October 3, but the developers irresponsibly abandoned the game without making it moddable) are reasonably priced and occasionally on-sale. 

The Madden football game for PC (currently only the ‘22 and ‘23 editions are available while the more popular ‘19 edition was inexcusably pulled from Steam by EA Sports) is grossly overpriced at $60 each. The ‘23 game has an embarrassing “mostly negative reviews” by gamers on Steam. It is lacking next-gen features (it uses the older one that is ten-years-old!) that the game has on consoles like PS5 or X-Box series X/S and it is lacking an important feature called “FieldSense” which is included in the game for the latter and former consoles but excluded from the PC version but the PC version is still being offered at a price that is arguably a ripoff. 

As PC Gamer says, 

“The version of Madden NFL 23 you can pre-purchase on Steam is not the same Madden 23 you can get for the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It's equivalent to the version being released for the last-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles, which are nearly 10 years old. That means the PC version won't include Madden 23's headline feature, a ‘physics-informed’ animation system called ‘FieldSense.’” (“The PC version of Madden 23 doesn't include its biggest new feature,” By Tyler Wilde. https://www.pcgamer.com/madden-nfl-23-pc-version-fieldsense-last-gen/)

Meanwhile, Early Access football games like Sunday Rivals and Football Simulator are becoming vastly popular with mostly positive reviews compared to Madden. They are offered at the reasonable price of $19.99 each (Football Simulator is currently on sale for only $17.99 through October 3rd). The developers of these Early Access games are consistently updating their games with patches and new features.

The other team sports games on Steam that are never or rarely on sale include Super Mega Baseball 3, FIFA 22 and FIFA 23, NBA 2K21,NBA 2K22, NBA 2K23, and Full Ace Tennis Simulator.

MVP Baseball 2005 (PC)

When MVP Baseball 2005 was released for the PC seventeen years ago by Electronic Sports (ES), it was overwhelmingly a colossal hit among gamers, especially sports fans. It is listed among the top computer games of all-time. It is considered the greatest baseball game in the history of computer gaming. Gamers still discuss the game and wish the franchise did not abruptly come to an end.

The game was a dream come true for longtime gamers. It had beautiful graphics, a stats system that was phenomenal and unmatched, the very best franchise mode in the sports game genre, custom built stadiums with options and settings that were advanced for that era, and much, much more. 

Nobody thought back then that such a beautiful, successful and widely popular game would come to an end and be rendered unplayable not long in the future, but this is precisely what happened not because of loss of interest among fans but because Major League Baseball signed an exclusive licensing deal with Take-Two Interactive after the release of the game by ES. This meant that ES was no longer permitted to produce a game or even re-release a game like MVP featuring MLB franchises and MLB players.

Who got hurt? The fans. Who cares? Apparently not one person who has the power to allow the re-release of MVP Baseball 2005, especially on a format like Steam where the game would arguably become an instant hit and make a ton of money and quickly become the #1 sports game of all-time on Steam. 

Gamers, unfortunately, cannot even play the game on current or even on older computers using the original discs that came with the game because of an intentional block. How cruel! The Compatibility mode is useless. The so-called “5 patches” that are downloadable from the MVPMods website and that supposedly can launch the game are useless as well. 

It is an “end-of-life” product (a phrase from retail and marketing). What can be done to bring back this great classic to the PC? Petition. But who can be petitioned? Electric Arts and Major League Baseball. The latter and former ought to negotiate a deal to re-release MVP

Baseball 2005 and produce an updated version with current players. This isn’t rocket science. It should not take much effort to get the game back into active mode again and thus make a large number of fans very happy.