Richard Garriott Is About to Get the Ultima Copyright Back

Richard Garriott created Ultima in the early 1980s, and for most of the time since, the rights to the series have sat with someone else. That looks set to change. In an interview with YouTuber Jesse Petrilla, Garriott confirmed that the copyright will soon come back to him.

The mechanism is a part of US copyright law that lets authors reclaim rights they signed away decades ago. Garriott sold the Ultima rights to Origin Systems, the studio he founded, and Origin was later bought by Electronic Arts. Under the reversion rules, those old transfers do not last forever.

## How the handover works

US copyright law gives creators a chance to take back rights after a set number of years, usually around 35 for transfers made after 1978. The window opens during a specific stretch of time, and the author has to file the right paperwork to make it count. Garriott has been open about wanting Ultima back, and he says the process is now moving toward that outcome.

EA has owned the Ultima name since it bought Origin in 1992. The publisher has kept the series largely dormant since Ultima Online, with a few mobile and browser experiments over the years. Ultima IX: Ascension in 1999 was the last mainline single-player entry.

## What it means for players

Getting the copyright back would not automatically mean a new Ultima game. Garriott would still need a studio, funding and a team, and any project would take years to build. But it changes who gets to decide what happens next with Britannia and the Avatar.

Garriott has spent the last decade on Shroud of the Avatar, a spiritual successor to Ultima that never reached the audience the original series had. Fans have long asked whether he would return to the world he built, and this news gives that question a real answer for the first time in years.

## The bigger picture

Copyright reversion is rare in games, mostly because few creators stick around long enough to use it. Garriott is in an unusual spot. He is still active in the industry, he still talks about Ultima often, and he now stands to hold the rights to one of the founding franchises of the RPG genre.

Nothing is official until the paperwork clears. For now, the takeaway is simple: one of gaming's oldest series may soon be back in the hands of the person who started it.

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Source: mmorpg.com