2K Sports Won't Renew MLB 2K Series

Take-Two Interactive appear to have erased the now-defunct baseball franchise MLB 2K from the internet.

The Major League Baseball 2K series began in 2004 with ESPN Major League Baseball 2K4. Take-Two published the MLB 2K series under the 2K Sports label. After the release of Major League Baseball 2K12 in March 2012 the label gave no indication that it was planning to release another MLB 2K title.

However last January saw the surprise announcement from Take-Two of Major League Baseball 2K13. The title was released in March 2013 but critically panned as being almost an exact clone of its predecessor.

It seems Take-Two may have taken this harshly as all mentions of MLB 2K titles - game pages, press releases etc - have now been removed from the 2K Games website. The MLB 2K section of the 2K Forums have also been removed and searching for the games on the 2K website generates no results.

The Windows PC and Xbox 360 versions of Major League Baseball 2K10, Major League Baseball 2K11 and Major League Baseball 2K12 are no longer available for purchase on Steam or Xbox Games Store.

The deletions appear to have taken place at the turn of the new year, which would seem to indicate that Take-Two's licensing agreement with Major League Baseball for MLB 2K13 expired on December 31st 2013.

A representative for 2K Sports provided the following statement:

We have decided not to renew our MLB 2K series for 2014. We are very proud of the achievements made by the MLB 2K team and look forward to their contributions to our future titles, including NBA 2K — our industry's #1 rated and #1 selling basketball franchise.

There is currently no news regarding a takeover of the MLB franchise by another developer.