Sierra On-Line, Inc.

Sierra Online was a famous developed of computer games. However, they now are defunct and no longer exist.

Sierra Online came into contact with the Ultima series in 1982. Richard Garriott needed a publisher for Ultima II. His idea of putting a cloth map into every box was very expensive, and no publisher was willing to pay the money, since even after the initial success of Ultima I, it was still unsure if the series would be a success. Only Sierra was willing to do the job.

However, after the game was published (some sources say, even before, considering that Garriott seemed to lack enthusiasm later in the project), relations between Garriott and Sierra soured, since he didn't like how Sierra was attempting to gain more influence, so Garriott founded Origin with the money he'd made with the game to be his own man.

Sierra was unwilling for years to sell the rights to Ultima II back to Garriott, and even after they did so, still held the rights to the cover image, thus it never appeared on the compilations made by Origin. All later releases of the game had the Sierra logo removed from the map, and all mention replaced i nthe game by references to Origin.

Trivia

 * The name of the Quicksword, "Enilno", is "Online" writte backwards, hinting at Sierra.