New Ultima trademarks filed by EA, but don't get too excited

The Ultima series is one of gaming's most iconic, and most influential. Pretty much any RPG maker coming out of the '90s has more than likely been influenced by creator Richard Garriott's work in some capacity, and its potential revival has long been on the wishlists of many. Lord British himself has hardly made secret his desire to reboot Ultima, and, with or without its progenitor, EA looks to be doing something by filing new trademarks.

As spotted by Phrasemaker, EA last week locked in Class 009 and Class 041 trademarks for Ultima, which protect it as a downloadable PC game and an online experience respectively. Beforehand, it had only been marked under Class 028: "Computer game programs recorded on magnetic media." This was fine for the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s, but became obsolete as distribution progressively digitalized. MMO Ultima Online was covered by its own Class 041 trademark, though this presumably didn't extend to its offline siblings.

Of course, it's not like EA's had a need to modernize Ultima's protection. There hasn't been a new single-player instalment since 1999's disappointing Ultima 9 effectively closed the curtain on it. EA maintains Ultima Online's servers, but hitherto this latest development, the publisher hasn't shown the slightest bit of intent to spin the series back up.

What does this mean for Ultima, then? Well, Garriott has remained vocal on socials that he wants another crack at it. Just last month, the developer responded to a fan's wish for a new Ultima, saying "I hope to provide that dream." Garriott revealed NFT MMO Iron & Magic back in 2022, but the Web3-based project quickly went quiet - it's probably for the best. 2018's Shroud of the Avatar was hardly a glistening return to gamecraft for the legendary dev, so I have to wonder if EA would be willing to take the punt. That is, if there's more to this than just routine IP protection work.

Licensing Ultima to somewhere like Larian instead would be the safer bet. CEO Swen Vincke has previously spoken on how it was one of three options, alongside Fallout and eventual winner Baldur's Gate, that he wanted to work on if he couldn't make a DnD game. Back in 2024, Vincke said that Larian wanted to make two different games. Presumably, the new Divinity is one of them. As for the other… I'm not one to speculate, so all I'm going to say is it'd be a perfect match. A modern audience, tragically, probably wouldn't even know what Ultima is, so it feels like EA would need a studio of this caliber behind any potential project.

Regardless of if there's any fire to the smoke, or if it's just EA tightening up its protections, it's nice to see any sort of movement regarding Ultima for the first time in years. Though my hopes for a return to Britannia have long-since faded, I'm willing to chomp on this measly morsel.