Ultima Rights Returning to Creator Richard Garriott

Could the grandfather of RPGs make a comeback? Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima, says he's about to get the rights back from EA, and that means we might see the series return as early as next year.

Ultima is one of the most influential RPG series ever, but it's been stuck in EA's vault for decades. Garriott sold his studio, Origin Systems, to EA back in 1992, along with the Ultima IP. He stayed on for years, directing several Ultima games and producing the groundbreaking MMO Ultima Online. But in 1999, EA canceled all of Origin's in-development projects, partly due to the poor reception of Ultima IX: Ascension. Garriott left shortly after, and EA shut Origin down in 2004.

Now, Garriott says a quirky US copyright law is giving him a second chance. "There's a really weird United States copyright law that says, if you are the original holder of a copyright and you assign it or sell it to any publisher or any other entity, after 35 years you can just take it back," he explained in a new interview with Jesse Petrilla. "There's no money that you need to transfer, all you need to do is tell them a year before you take it back."

And that's exactly what he did. "In April of this year, I told Electronic Arts, 'by the way, I'm gonna take the copyrights to Ultima back,' and they wrote back and said, 'yeah, we know that's the law, we will act accordingly,'" Garriott said. "And so I'm now in discussions with them actively right now as to, 'is there anything we should do together or not?'"

So what does this mean for you? If everything goes as planned, Garriott could re-release the early Ultima games, or even make proper sequels. "At the very least it means I could re-release the early Ultimas, but it also means I could sequel them... the point is, I have control again of the future of my seminal product line," he said. That's huge for fans who've been waiting decades for a new single-player Ultima. Could we finally get the canceled Ultima Online 2? That steampunk MMO was announced in 1999 but canceled in 2001. Garriott's words don't confirm it, but they do open the door.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. EA still holds the rights right now, and the discussions are ongoing. Garriott's post-Ultima career has had its ups and downs, including an NFT-based MMO that didn't exactly win everyone over. But for many, Ultima is better off with its original creator than gathering dust at EA. As one former EA manager suggested, the company might sell off "dormant IPs" like Ultima and Wing Commander following the Saudi acquisition.

For now, we'll have to wait and see what Garriott and EA decide. But the idea of a new Ultima, or even just remasters of the classics, is enough to get any old-school RPG fan excited. What do you think? Would you play a new Ultima from Richard Garriott, or should the series stay in the past?