Troubling news from Diamond Mind Baseball?

For those of you who don't follow this stuff -- OK, just about everybody on the planet -- Diamond Mind Baseball was purchased a couple years ago by a company called Imagine Sports. (Diamond Mind Baseball isn't just the name of our league; it's the name of the company that makes the software that Yaro uses to simulate our seasons.)

Ever since it was purchased, people have been concerned that they would stop supporting the software and just switch to an online-only model. That hasn't happened yet, but on Thursday, the owner of Imagine Sports made the following announcement:

It’s no secret that Imagine Sports acquired Diamond Mind for strategic reasons connected to its online games, not because we wanted to own a pc sports game business. The online games have been and always will be our priority, and, yes, Tom knew that when he sold the company. Nonetheless, we always thought that we could keep the PC game business going for you all, as we figured it could at least cover its costs. To demonstrate that and as a show of good faith, we tried to change very little (at first), and we put out version 9c, for which you had been waiting for awhile before we were around. We continued the season disks every year, on time and with the same quality you’d come to expect (or at least we hope we did).

After getting 9c done, however, we were not really sure where to go with game. I think it showed in our communication, and our indecision led to mistakes. To be clear, however, there was never any attempt to mislead you, nor was any product offering ever held back for any reason other than it not being complete (despite some claims here to the contrary,) including version 10.

It’s also clear that I have never been able to relate well to this community, nor have I communicated effectively with it. I’m sorry about that. Rest assured, however, that I do appreciate your passion for the game, and it’s the primary reason we’ve kept it alive. It’s also clear, however, that it will not thrive again under the management of Imagine Sports, given our online focus. Therefore, we started exploring strategic alternatives for the PC game over a year ago, including licensing, development and marketing partnerships, and even an outright sale of the PC game business. We had significant discussions with at least three parties interested in the PC game. None of those discussions came to fruition, unfortunately. However, we will now make a renewed effort to work out some sort of arrangement with the hope of finding someone or some company who wants to make this game its priority. Any of your suggestions or ideas to that end are welcome, and I’ll schedule a chat to discuss those ideas after v10 is released.

Until we do find that other party to take over, we will continue selling the game and disks via the new store, and we intend to produce the 2010 season disk as usual (and, to be clear, Luke’s contract with the Red Sox carves out time in the fall for him to do it).

So what does this mean for DMBL?

Yaro can continue sim'ing the game with or without Version 10... that really won't make any difference. Version 9c works just fine. The problem is the 2010 season disk (and season disks beyond that). In the last paragraph, the owner says "we intend to produce the 2010 season disk as usual" -- well, intend is always a troubling word in PR speak, isn't it? So we'll see.

If DMB doesn't release a 2010 season disk, we can always hope that someone releases a "homebrew" version... Stephen Drake has done a number of previous seasons, maybe he'll step up again. If worse comes to worse, maybe we can start over in 1991. I have a feeling Cecil Fielder won't be the first pick this time. ;)