- Primary Subject: Ultima rights dispute and dormant game franchises
- Key Idea: Why publishers keeping inactive IPs locked away raises questions about ownership, preservation, and creative responsibility
- Status: Opinion
- Last Verified: July 27, 2026
- Quick Answer: The piece argues that while publishers have legal ownership of dormant franchises like Ultima, long-term inactivity combined with refusal to license or develop them raises questions about whether IP control should come with some responsibility to preserve, use, or share those properties.
Ultima creator Richard Garriott is trying to reclaim the rights to the series he created, reportedly using a provision of US copyright law that may allow creators to recover ownership decades after transferring their work.
Electronic Arts acquired Ultima in 1992, which could make 2027 an important year in that effort.
At the same time, EA has registered new Ultima trademarks despite showing no public sign that another game is actually in development.
It's difficult to look at this as just another rights dispute. The last mainline Ultima released in 1999.
Garriott still has ideas for the series, EA apparently has no immediate plans for it, yet the publisher remains interested in protecting its ownership.
We have seen similar situations across the industry, where a company keeps control of a franchise long after the original team has moved on and long after the series itself has stopped generating anything meaningful.
I do not believe every dormant IP needs a sequel. Some games belong to a specific era, some stories are finished, and some franchises were simply never as commercially strong as nostalgia makes them seem.
Still, I think there is a major difference between allowing a series to end and deliberately preventing anyone else from doing something with it.
If publishers want to retain permanent control over an IP, I think they should be expected to develop it, preserve it, license it or at least seriously consider letting its creators use it again.
The Responsibility That Comes With Ownership
Mention dormant IP for long enough, and someone will inevitably start naming the games they want back.
PlayStation alone has inFamous, Sly Cooper, Killzone, Resistance, MotorStorm, Ape Escape and The Legend of Dragoon.
Nintendo has an even larger archive of dormant series, including Punch-Out, F-Zero, Golden Sun, Custom Robo and plenty of stranger names that have not been seen in decades.
I understand why players want these games to return. Many of them offered styles of play that are less common now, while others are attached to very specific memories of a console generation.
However, affection is not the same as commercial demand (and a popular Reddit thread is certainly not a sales forecast).
That's also why I'm not calling for every forgotten franchise to return. Some are better remembered than revived, while others need nothing more ambitious than a remaster or a clean modern port.
There are valid reasons publishers move away from older franchises. Guerrilla Games left Killzone behind and found far greater success with Horizon. Sucker Punch moved from inFamous to Ghost of Tsushima. Naughty Dog stopped making Jak and Daxter and eventually created Uncharted and The Last of Us.
I would not want developers permanently trapped inside the first successful series they happened to make. The problem begins when a publisher decides that a franchise is not worth using, but also refuses to let anyone else use it.
If EA does not want to spend hundreds of millions on a new Ultima, I understand that. The same goes for Sony choosing not to pull one of its major studios away from a proven franchise just to make another Sly Cooper.
What I have a much harder time accepting is the assumption that publishers either make the next blockbuster - or lock the franchise away indefinitely.
There is a huge space between those two options. Publishers can license an IP to a smaller studio, approve a lower-budget spin-off, commission a remaster or allow an experienced original creator to pitch something new.
They do not need to roll the dice on every legacy franchise - they simply need to stop locking them away by default.
Publishers will reasonably argue that they paid for these properties and therefore have the right to decide what happens to them. Legally, that is often true. Creatively, I think it is more complicated.
A game franchise is not valuable simply because a company owns the trademark. Its value comes from the developers who created it, the players who supported it and the years of cultural importance built around it.
I don't want to downplay what publishers contribute - they finance projects, take risks and distribute games - but simply owning an IP doesn't make them the reason it became beloved.
When a publisher continues developing a series, maintains access to its older games or licenses it responsibly, ownership makes sense because the company is acting as a custodian.
If a franchise is left idle while every alternative is closed off, ownership starts looking increasingly difficult to defend.
Dragon Age illustrates the problem perfectly - EA may decide another blockbuster RPG is too risky after The Veilguard, especially while BioWare is occupied with Mass Effect. I may disagree with that choice, but I understand the logic.
What bothers me is that the people who built Dragon Age still have the talent, the ideas and even studios of their own - yet they cannot meaningfully touch the series without EA saying yes.
The same applies to Ultima. From EA's perspective, keeping the series in reserve is prudent asset management. From mine, it's creative stagnation by another name.
I think publishers should have to demonstrate some form of continued responsibility. That could mean making the older games available, funding new projects, accepting credible licensing proposals or allowing rights to revert after a long period of total inactivity.
I am not suggesting a mandatory sequel every five years (that would only produce rushed games designed to satisfy a legal requirement), but indefinite ownership should require more than renewing paperwork.
There are obvious risks in licensing a dormant franchise. A poor revival can damage a name, and another studio will not automatically understand what made the original games work.
Even so, Baldur's Gate 3 showed what can happen when an established property is given to a developer with the right experience and vision.
Larian did not simply preserve Baldur's Gate as a nostalgic artifact. It understood the series well enough to move it forward.
I'm not suggesting every dormant franchise will produce another Baldur's Gate 3 - that would be an unrealistic standard. Sometimes a remaster, a smaller spin-off or simply preserving the originals is enough.
Garriott's attempt to reclaim Ultima matters because it asks a question the industry has quietly danced around for decades - how long should a publisher be allowed to warehouse an IP it didn't create?
I believe publishers deserve to profit from the risks they take and the games they finance. However, they should not be entitled to permanent control without permanent responsibility.
If a company develops, preserves or responsibly licenses a franchise, it has earned its place as its custodian. If it refuses to do any of those things, perhaps the IP deserves the chance to go somewhere else.
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