A brand-new Ultima RPG is on the table now that the series’ developer is returning the rights from EA

Ultima is a fundamental RPG series that’s long been left in the past by rights holder EA, however according to series developer Richard Garriott, that might all be altering as early as next year.

Garriott offered Origin Systems, the studio he co-founded with his bro and daddy, to EA back in 1992 in addition to the rights to the Ultima IP. He would continue working there for several years to come, directing numerous Ultima RPGs and working as manufacturer on the critical MMORPG, Ultima Online. In 1999, EA canceled all of Origin’s in-development tasks partially due to bad reception to Ultima IX: Ascension, and Garriott left the business soon after that. After a couple of years keeping Ultima Online and dealing with another online Ultima video game that would become canceled, Origin was closed down by EA in 2004. 22 years later on, Garriott states he’ll quickly own the rights to the series as soon as again.

“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,” Garriott informs Jesse Petrilla in a brand-new interview. “There’s no money that you need to transfer, all you need to do is tell them a year before you take it back.

“Therefore, in April of this year, I informed Electronic Arts, ‘by the method, I’m gon na take the copyrights to Ultima back,’and they composed back and stated, ‘yeah, we understand that’s the law, we will act appropriately. ‘Therefore I’m now in conversations with them actively today regarding,’ exists anything we should do together or not?'”

As EA is still the rights holder currently, there’s no assurance on what form this possible Ultima revival will take. Garriott states “we’ll figure it out,” “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.”

“Sequel them,” you state? As in, the main steampunk Ultima Online 2 that was revealed in 1999 and canceled in 2001? Ultima Online is most likely the video game I’ve put the most hours into in my entire life, and a follow up would be entirely surreal at least.

Presuming Garriott’s appropriate and he gains back ownership of Ultima next year, I’ll be nervously thrilled to see what follows. Easy remakes or remasters of early Ultima video games would be simple winners as long as their core systems stay primarily unblemished, however an entire brand-new video game with Garriott at the helm might go in any case. While his impact on the RPG category is indisputable, Garriott has actually sometimes tripped his method through debate in his decades-long profession, that includes efforts at an NFT-based MMO and a string of post-Ultima releases that have not all been favored.

Regardless, I ‘d argue Ultima remains in much better hands with Garriott than it is under EA’s umbrella, where it would most likely never ever be touched once again.

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