Last year, Backyard Basketball ’01 and Backyard Hockey ’02 were released on Steam, published by Playground Productions. In case you’re unfamiliar, Playground is not the original publisher of the series; in the 90s, the games were published by a company called Humongous Entertainment, then later published by Atari in the 2000s. Now, Playground is publishing a completely new Backyard Baseball game in 2026, and the story behind it is wild.
In an Interview with Insider Gaming, Lindsay Barnett, a former elementary school teacher, explained how she wanted to see Backyard Sports return for the new generation. Unable to find the game on modern platforms, here’s what she did:
“When it was nowhere to be found, I did what an even more bored teacher does, which is call a law firm and try to be Nancy Drew and see if I can figure out this mystery, and I wound up hiring a private investigator to track the rights down.”
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After finally tracking down the rights owners, Ari Pinchot and Avi Savitski, Barnett spent over two years acquiring the rights to the franchise. She had a vision for a new version of the game and approached developer Mega Cat Studios to help develop the game.
One Of The Strangest IP Revivals
This entire story is nothing short of astounding. The fact that at the center of it is an elementary school teacher with no experience in the games industry makes it even more interesting. Here’s why Barnett was so driven to make her dream come true:
“I was a very sporty little girl in Chicago, and this was the game that made me fall in love with baseball and football. I was looking for great content for kids and especially great games that they could be playing on their computers, and this franchise was nowhere to be found.”
Playground Production has already seen success with the re-release of older Backyard Sports games, such as Backyard Baseball ’97. For a while, the game was enough of a hit to “knock off Minecraft from the top spot on mobile,” as Barnett says. The new Backyard Baseball launches on July 9, 2026, and there’s a demo for it out now on Steam.
Published: Apr 9, 2026 03:30 pm