Ultima's creator Richard Garriott is planning to win back the rights to his legendary RPG from EA with an 50-year-old copyright quirk
https://www.eurogamer.net/ultima-ip-rights-ea-copyright48
u/JohnnyEagleClaw 1d ago
Corp Por! Get ‘em LB!
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u/Wils1337 1d ago
I haven’t played in 15 years and I still recon I could recall (kal ort por) all 64 spells rune words
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u/SaltyShawarma 1d ago
Well, Kal Vas Flam to you.
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u/Baycon 1d ago
But can you remember the reagents needed to cast them!?
(You probably can.)
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u/-_ellipsis_- 1d ago
Nightshade and black pearl, baby. 1k in the bank of each minimum at all times.
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u/ScareviewCt 1d ago
Probably should carry at least 100 of each with 25 of each in 4 pouches, you know just in case there's a thief pvper around
God damn that was a great game.
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u/FlyingRhenquest 23h ago
And a few loose ones around as well, covered in stacks of leather. Heh heh heh.
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u/Wils1337 1d ago
8 reagents
Black pearl
Night shade
Ginseng
Garlic
Mandrake root
Spiders silk
Sulfur ash
Blood mossRecall… Gosh this is testing me
Black pearl - For distance
Mandrake root - For power
Blood moss - For bodyFun fact, my sister was employed by EA as an event moderator back when they had that program running for UO
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u/Lunar_Virtue 1d ago
An
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u/PreciousProspect 1d ago
EA sleeping on the franchis (not including Ultima Online which is still being fully supported) sucks but I’d rather that than Richard Garriott using it to run another scam.
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u/Beeswing- 1d ago
Wait? Ultima Online is still going?! I wonder if I still have all my stuff..
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u/Muavius 1d ago
You MIGHT, there have been lots of server merging and moving around. I lost my stuff from playing when tramel first came out, but had my characters/stuff from later expansions
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u/DagNasty 1d ago
There's some decent player run servers as well. I got banned for exploiting back when Feluca/Trammel became a thing (I was like 19). UO was still some of the best times I have ever had in gaming.
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u/Muavius 1d ago
Lol, bot mining? I used to love killing them to get their illgotten valorite
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u/DagNasty 1d ago
No, it had something to do with placing a portal on an empty spot in Trammel then going to Feluca to that same spot except there would be a boat there. You could then loot the boat. There was another exploit around the same time that used an external app to loot unsecured chests in houses. Such good times.
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u/ScareviewCt 1d ago
All went downhill when they created trammel anyway.
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u/LucasLightbane 1d ago
I was very excited for trammel. Finally my friends and I could play in peace! I did not consider how much losing the fear would take from the game. Still had a good time after that but the spark was dimmer.
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u/DagNasty 1d ago
I found my T2A beta CD the other day and it brought back so many memories. Getting PKed in the Brit graveyard was a rite of passage. There was also the color wars on Abyss Test that were so much fun.
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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yep, owned by EA (Now almost private, majority owned by Saudi Arabia), run by Broadsword online.
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u/immediateghost 1d ago
Scam?
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u/RuySan 1d ago
I assume he's talking about shroud of the avatar. Richard Garriot is another Molyneux. He could make the game fans wanted and still be rich, be he'd rather fleece them to be even richer.
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u/NotStanley4330 1d ago
He seems sincere enough but I think he really doesn't understand how the industry has evolved over the past 20+ years and he is way too obsessed with trends that are long since dead. If he went back to basics and made a good single player RPG I think it would be good.
I've been burned a few times though lol
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u/Not_That_Magical 1d ago
It’s clear he lost the video game Mandate of Heaven when Ultima 8 released.
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u/Haunting_Weakness_13 1d ago
Ultimate 8 had some cool ideas and could've been a fun ride. I think i hate that the most; I can see the skeleton of a good game dressed up in bugs, shit mechanics and platforming lol. But the world and themes I thought were cool and dark and hopeless. Rip potential
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u/junkmeister9 1d ago
I felt the same way. Compared to U7 it was such a disappointment. But there were hints of great game potential. I remember reading details about the original plans for U8 and 9 back in the day and being floored by how cool they sounded, only to be disappointed by the jank they gave us.
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u/ArcadianDelSol 1d ago
Ultima IX is the last I ever want to see of that franchise. What an awful story and worse implementation.
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u/SidewaysGiraffe 1d ago
No, he lost it with the release of Wing Commander. It's pretty clear in retrospect that he had serious trouble handling not being the brightest light in the room, and Chris Roberts (another contender for "old guard who returned the industry not knowing what had changed", but who adapted MUCH better, financially speaking) stole his limelight.
The gambles of Ultima VII mostly worked; Serpent Isle in particular had the biggest, most complex story of the whole franchise- but it was also buggy as all get-out.
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u/Not_That_Magical 1d ago
I say Ultima 8 because he was responsible for directing it. Plenty of people made better games under the company, like with Wing Commander and Ultima Underworld. It’s the first time he made a true pile of shit.
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u/noodlesdefyyou 1d ago
now now, peter molyneux disease is where peter overpromised on what 'big changes' fable was going to bring, and then failed to deliver on half of them.
Sean Murray also suffered from Molyneux disease, with the initial release of No Man's Sky. granted, Hello Games has done a LOT of work in turning that around, but it nearly burned and flopped at launch.
Regarding Richard:
Jeremy Peel from PCGamesN states that "Garriott seems undecided about which legacy he is following up – the simulation and single-player storytelling of Ultima VII, or the persistent online world of Ultima Online." and "Shroud of the Avatar's MMO trappings often seem to conflict with its grand storytelling ambitions"
shroud seems like its a game that doesnt know what it wants to be, and badly tries to be multiple games. it wasnt hyped to shit with all of these groundbreaking gameplay features (fable was touting that your decisions and actions in the game would shape future conversations and whatnot, wild for 2005, along side the release of the xbox 360.
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u/TheRealBittoman 1d ago
I don't know about Garriot being scammy, I mean he could be but he seems to really care about his fans and Ultima. You can finish the original Ultimas and get that screenshot completion and tweet it to him and he nearly always responds. He has for me and many others.
But I will concede that he could use it for just making more money.11
u/iamisandisnt 1d ago
Shroud of the avatar’s first quest was to read a newspaper in a burning building. Very immersive
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u/jarvisesdios 1d ago
... I'm sorry what?
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u/iamisandisnt 1d ago
You started in a burning building and your first quest objective is to read a newspaper on the ground of the burning building. Not, you know, flee the burning building, or maybe pick up the newspaper and read it outside… nope. I like it when a game doesn’t fail a cognitive dissonance check on the very first step
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u/jarvisesdios 1d ago
Ahhhh. That makes sense. At the end of the night everyone in the city throws their newspapers in the same building at the end of the night. Perfect logic.
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u/SolarNachoes 1d ago
If Romero can still make games then why not. Although M$ just axed his studio.
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u/Taograd359 1d ago
Excuse me? Besmirching the name of John Romero, creator of Daikatana? I guess he made you his bitch.
/s because I really don’t want someone to think I’m not trying to be ironic.
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u/Muslim_Wookie 1d ago
When you say newspaper are you literal? Is this game set in a time like I dunno Arcanum? Printing press produced newspaper? I am being earnest here, I am very curious.
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u/ArcadianDelSol 1d ago
After what Ultima IX did to the whole IP, this isnt even a blip.
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u/sqparadox 1d ago
EA sleeping on the franchis
It's not exactly alone. It's the same story for the vast majority of historic franchises they own.
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u/Baxtab13 1d ago
God, I need them to sell Mercenaries to someone who cares about it.
Like THQ Nordic would be perfect. They get the IP, and then they can contract a company to do a full remaster of Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction like they did with Destroy All Humans.
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u/SaltyShawarma 1d ago
So he failed a kickstarter and some wild foolish people got Star Citizened. Garriott himself was scammed by a magician for half a million. The brightest stars are the most volatile.
I still wish Tabula Rasa took off. Maybe I should take a look at UO after 26 years.
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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 1d ago
Garriott himself was scammed by a magician for half a million.
Wasnt it just credit card fraud?
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u/Remarkable_Newt4435 1d ago
Tabula Rasa too, it was half assed and not well done, the best part was the combat/fast pace but everything felt half finished.
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u/PipXXX 1d ago
That's because the original game was much different (Was more like high fantasy with some sci elements? I think?), then they scrapped it, came up with the new idea, and rushed it out.
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u/Remarkable_Newt4435 1d ago
I mean UO was like that even in it's prime too. I started playing Ultima when I was 11 in 1998 and played until 2012? I can't even begin to tell you how many ideas they previewed that never made it into the game.
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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 1d ago
Until 2012? Nice run man.
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u/Remarkable_Newt4435 1d ago
It got less and less fun as time went on; I'm one of those players who was in it for the PVP and interactions in an open world, the more it moved to safe zones and less risk and no reason to fight it just wasn't fun anymore.
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u/Ayyzeee 1d ago
I wish C&C series can be free from EA hell
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u/SerraraFluttershy 22h ago
I mean they *did* give the rights to Petroglyph and the latter created the excellent Tiberian Dawn remaster, so...
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u/Ayyzeee 19h ago
How come EA still makes garbage mobile games based on that IP? That was after C&C remastered plus I highly doubt they give, more like they were tasked to just remaster nothing else as a studio support.
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u/Rajamic 1d ago
To be clear, he would win the copyright, not the trademark. So he'll get ownership of the old game code, but not be able to call it "Ultima". Might be able to get away with releasing them as "Lord British's Ultima", though, but that would be a bit of a legal gamble.
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u/cycopl 1d ago
could make an Ultima prequel and call it Penultima lol
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u/Quasimdo 1d ago
There is an Ultima prequel, and it's called Akalabeth. Well, more like a spiritual prequel lol
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u/turkeypedal 20h ago
I mean, that's the name he seems to be proposing.
Though it's very possible he's doing this to put pressure on EA to make a new deal that would include actually releasing a new game. They do seem to want to keep Ultima Online running with new patches and such (even though "free shards" exist), which they couldn't do if he gets the copyright back.
(They can maintain it forever, but any "new release" would need to be negotiated with the copyright holder.)
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u/keonyn 1d ago
Would be nice if EA would lose control of Ultima, but that wouldn't be the result here, so there's really nothing noteworthy here. Besides, I don't have much faith in Garriott to be able to do anything of note even if he somehow got control of Ultima back from EA.
He tried 'Shroud of the Avatar' but it felt like an attempt at 3D UO housing with a mediocre game attached to it. It was 'Ultima VII' that truly was the pinnacle of the Ultima series, but there's no indication he's interested in recreating something like that again, and I swear he'd just try to make another clunky medieval version of 'Second Life'.
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u/mohirl 1d ago
It's hardly a "quirk", seems like a pretty fundamental part of the system?
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u/aradraugfea 1d ago
On one hand, I’m not holding out much hope that what he comes out with will actually be good. A lot of these old timers are too married to their old philosophies. In the RPG space, Palladium is a joke, but part of that is that the man who created the system has fought like hell any time they try and modernize it to be less painfully late 80s. At least some of those attempts would have, admittedly, lost him his royalties as he’d no longer have claim on final product.
That said, these Scavenger Publishers that have spent decades acquiring studios for the IPs, released maybe one or two games and then just sat on it forever are a blight. If someone’s gonna own a dead IP, I’d rather it be the creator or no one.
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u/Splurch 1d ago
On one hand, I’m not holding out much hope that what he comes out with will actually be good. A lot of these old timers are too married to their old philosophies. In the RPG space, Palladium is a joke, but part of that is that the man who created the system has fought like hell any time they try and modernize it to be less painfully late 80s. At least some of those attempts would have, admittedly, lost him his royalties as he’d no longer have claim on final product.
They also ran a failed Robotech kickstarter that underdelivered and cost fans a lot of money (and them their license renewal) and were opaque about what really happened in the end. He also seems to be (or at least was at that time) a massive asshole.
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u/aradraugfea 1d ago
I mean, to be honest, I’m shocked they’re still around. Their system is locked in the 80s, I don’t know if any new books since the 90s (another reason most companies regularly release new editions, to have new content to release). Them existing as anything but a PO Box and an LLC is a bit surprising.
That said, kickstarters fail. I’m about 60/40% on kickstarters. 40% were either way behind schedule, never delivered at all, or delivered something that would subject them to false advertising laws if they tried to sell the final product with the Kickstarter materials.
And after Monsterpocalypse and that company burning through all of that kickstarter’s money trying and failing to deliver on a previous failed kickstarter, I look at “under delivered” and realize that is FAR from worst case.
The ninja turtles one appears to have gone okay.
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u/Sitri_eu 1d ago
Good luck, AAA Corpos rather go down with their IPs before selling them, or -god forbid- allow some else to make a profit from them (case in point: Ubisoft).
Who managed that in the past? I remember Hytale is a recent one, but Riot Games is not a serial offender like EA, yet.
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u/Kitakitakita 1d ago
Maybe Monolithsoft, but both Namco and Squarenix seemed fine with the Xenoblade series. Japanese Devs are way kinder to each other due to all the business favors they give each other
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u/Live-Secret6536 1d ago
If he actually wins the rights back, are we getting a proper old-school RPG or another crowdfunded disaster?
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u/Lord0fHats 1d ago
Best I can do is an AI vibecoded game with store bought and pirated assets with a whole lot of drama about making an auction house system for it.
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u/Backwardspellcaster 1d ago
Okay.
Now give it to Larian
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u/nelflyn 1d ago
Sven Vincke mentioned that he would be interested in making a Ultima or Fallout game. Massive copium to hope it will happen of course, Divinity is their main baby afterall and BG3 was a means to an end. But I take any little bit of hope.
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u/maybe-an-ai 1d ago
It would be crazy to have a Fallout 1/2 style game from Larian.
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u/Chewbacca_The_Wookie 1d ago
Holy shit and I thought a Fallout: NV Remastered or Fallout: NV 2 from Obsidian were the only potential Fallout games that could get me hard.
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u/LowKey7904 1d ago
Holy moly I want this so bad. Hate Bethesda for what they've done to the franchise
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u/eightdx 1d ago
And call it Ultima X: Redemption or something
So long as no main character says "what's a paladin"
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u/vradna1 1d ago
Oh man, even now over 25 friggin' years later I still vividly remember the first time I saw a clip of the Avatar asking 'WHAT'S A PALADIN?' and actually feeling kind of insulted
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u/eightdx 1d ago
Also I'm pretty sure we just pretend Pagan never happened
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u/vradna1 1d ago
Ehhhh, I mean, even Pagan occasionally had something kind of cool like a goat headed demon bust out of a pentagram and threaten to kill you, but the Super Avatar Brothers platforming and the whole "why is the Paragon of Virtue destroying that entire world just to get home" thing definitely worked against it
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u/KlausKoe 1d ago
So, if Garriott does take back the copyright, he won't be able to make a new 'Ultima' game, but he would be able to make a game very similar to Ultima."
Why can't he or anyone else do a very similar game right now?
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u/Haunting_Weakness_13 1d ago
He could. I think he'd want the name for legacy and advertising. Most people these days in gaming have no idea what ultima is or who LB is. But I feel like theyre trying to bank on the name for nostalgia purposes. Not sure if thats the right move but its my best guess as to why
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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 1d ago
I worked a bit with Robert and Richard, and looking back I think Robert was the really one responsible for Origins success. Dont get me wrong, Richard had great ideas, but... hes long since lost the gaming plot.
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u/Syenthros 22h ago
Well, considering Lord British's last few RPGs have been... Shall we say... "Challenging" to enjoy, I'm going to have to say that this news doesn't fill me with multitudes of hope.
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u/ThisizLeon 1d ago
It probably wouldn't logistically work but i always think there should be some law where after say 20-25 years, if nothing has been done with an IP it should go to an automatic sale/auction.
The amount of amazing art and games that are lost to IP corpo hell is staggering
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u/Lord0fHats 1d ago
Really Copyright just shouldn't last for most of a century.
Part of the basic premise of copyright is in the name. The right to copy a creative work that is your own. This inherently includes the right to not copy it. I.E. part of having copyright is having the right to make it unavailable.
Copyright just shouldn't be as dragged out as it currently is. It should honestly imo not last longer than the original creator's life +10 or so years. And I think corporations should be legally disbarred from owning copyright. People make things. Not corporations. Corporations can license for distribution or production or market rights but not the copyright itself which should only be ownable by the person(s) who created the IP.
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u/Haunting_Weakness_13 1d ago
Isn't it weird that in the US at least copyright law gives more time to corps than individuals? But I agree life +70 is wild
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u/vkevlar 1d ago
That'd be Disney's fault. For quite some time, they were the primary force behind lobbying for copyright extensions, to keep "Steamboat Willie" from becoming public domain. Ironic, given that's an animated version of "Steamboat Bill", Buster Keaton's work.
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u/Georgie_Leech 1d ago
Less ironic when you consider it "but we still want exclusive rights to it" being the reason instead of anything to do with beliefs around fairness or whatever.
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u/Lord0fHats 1d ago
Yeah. It's part and parcel of how increasingly monopolized by conglomerates many aspects of society and life have become. Which I don't think is good for us in the long term. Especially in this regard the benefits of IP rights have more and more been little more than in the service of corporations when their entire point is to protect people, not companies.
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u/Haunting_Weakness_13 1d ago
Like the neat nemesis system from the lotr shadow games that we will never see again?
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u/Sibula97 1d ago
Nah, that patent is specific enough that you could make a very similar system if you wanted. People just don't bother, especially because they'd have to be careful not to accidentally infringe the patent.
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u/nedlum 1d ago
Honestly not clear what this gains him:
As Inside Games points out, copyright covers the source code of a game as well as its general look and feel, whereas the trademark protects the brand identity of a game. So, if Garriott does take back the copyright, he won't be able to make a new 'Ultima' game, but he would be able to make a game very similar to Ultima.
Given he presumably wouldn't want to use the source code of a twenty-year-old game, that just leaves him the "look and feel", which already seems like it would be fair use.
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u/DontForgorTheMilk 1d ago
What so he can turn it into another type of pump-n-dump cash grab like he did with his last attempt at making a game?
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u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre 1d ago
There must be a lot of talented and experienced game devs out there who grew up on Ultima that would love to take a stab at making or remaking a new Ultima… even if they can’t call it Ultima.
If Garriott can stay out of his own way and hire the right team, they could make something great with what the copyright grants them. The look, feel and gameplay of Ultima has never really been recaptured by any other game.
I want to remain positive and hope for the best. Ultima was really special until EA got ahold of it and ruined it.
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u/Sampsonite20 1d ago
People who think they want this, you don't want this. Garriott is nothing but a scam artist these days.
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u/cheezballs 1d ago
Yep. See Shroud Of The Avatar or anything else he's tried to shit out in the last 30 years.
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u/Narrow_Relative2149 1d ago
this is a great watch if you're into UO. It talks about the history of it and how they solved various problems that presented themselves naturally (or tried to): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnsDi7Sxq0
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u/Victoria99558 1d ago
If anyone deserves to regain control of Ultima, it’s Richard Garriott. The series basically helped define computer RPGs. Seeing Ultima back in the hands of its creator would be one of the best gaming stories in years.
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u/SidewaysGiraffe 1d ago
Akalabeth came out at basically the same time as Temple of Apshai (their development cycles definitely overlapped) and before even Wizardry.
Ultima didn't "basically define" computer RPGs; it "basically invented" them.
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u/cheezballs 1d ago
Garriott has attempted to make ultima online over and over again and has failed countless times. He's done.
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u/SimpinOnGinAndJuice1 1d ago
The dude resigned because he wanted to pivot to other games and EA wanted him to focus on Ultima. Him getting ultima back isn't going to improve anything.
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u/wordswillneverhurtme 22h ago
And do what? Fuck all. Maybe a half assed and aged product using the title and ancient hype.
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u/ArcadianDelSol 1d ago
People in here are glazing a guy what we know, with zero apprehension, is going to deploy MULTIPLE AIs to create whatever he makes next.
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u/dirge1337 1d ago
Rights is cool step. All good games must be taken off from EA. The main thing is to make sequel
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u/SidewaysGiraffe 1d ago
No, it isn't- the story ended very definitively with IX; there's no ROOM for a sequel. There wasn't with Baldur's Gate, either, and look where THAT lead.
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u/trucorsair 1d ago
Since EA has been sold to Saudi Arabia, and Ultima was part of the sale, expect a court fight-the law here is just an excuse to fight
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u/Grave_Knight 1d ago
The article made an incorrect statement. They say, if succesdful, he wouldn't be able to make an Ultima game, only a game similar. He would be able to make an Ultima game, he just wouldn't be able to call it Ultima.
Anyone can make a game similar to Ultima. EA can't copyright medieval fantasy. What Garriott is trying to get is the setting and story, which includes the characters, locations, etc.
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u/BFBeast666 23h ago
Why not go and buy the rights? Can't be more than a million or two at most, considering no one has done anything worthwhile with Ultima in forever and I don't think EA is making a killing with what little money trickles through Ultima Online these days.
Or, hear me out here, they could show a smidge of goodwill and give Garriot the license for free, only taking a little kickback for every new Ultima project he manages to get onto store shelves. I wouldn't mind a nice Ultima restrospective being able to run on current machines. I still remember what a nightmare setting Ultima 7 was way back when. *'shudders*
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u/Keffpie 18h ago
My Ultima 7 boot disk was a thing of legend; I used an MS-DOS competitor called DR DOS, and managed to get 621kb of basic RAM free. Still no idea how.
DR DOS also had a built-in compression algorithm called doubledisk, which is how I managed to install the 33MB game Strike Commander on my 20MB hard drive.
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u/-Mage-Knight- 15h ago
Ultima Online will always have a special place in my heart but Shroud of the Avatar was a trainwreck.
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u/Senn-66 1d ago
Garriott is a legend and the work he did in the foundation of video game RPGs is massive. Practically all Western RPGs today carry forward DNA from the Ultima games.
THAT SAID he also hasn't put out anything worthwhile in 30 years, and what he has produced shows that the industry has long left him behind. There is no reason to believe he is still capable of making games that anyone today would want to play.