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.