Electronic Arts

Electronic Arts is currently one of biggest game distributors in the world. Founded in 1982 by Trip Hawkins, it has by now grown into a multi-national company and is one of the big players at the game market. However, the company is also infamous for its business practices, as its history with Origin proved.

The are the current owners of the Ultima trademark.

History with Origin
In 1984, Origin was in need of a distributor for the coming Ultima IV, since it was beyond their abilities to do all the work themselves. So they signed a deal with EA, that they would do the distribution in the USA (in Europe, Mindscape was the contractor).

However, as early as 1988, the relationship between these companies was strained, as probven in Ultima V, where one curse word was "Electronic Arts". Richard Garriott felt, that EA's policies were destructive and the relationship worsened over time. 1990, Origin openly based several bloothirsty pirates in Ultima VI on Trip Hawkins (Captain Hawkins), Joe Ybarra (Old Ybarra), Bing Gordon (Alastor Gordon) and Steward Bonn (Bonn). Richard Garriott also named a morgue after Hawkins.

The situation escalated in 1992. Origin had come because various reasons into finacial problems and EA was eager to buy the whole company. Although Origin was trying to avoid this and showed their distate of EA only thinly veiled in Ultima VII (The generators that form the EA logo, Elizabeth and Abraham, the Fellowship and the Guardian as the "Destroyer of Worlds"), the financial troubles in the end meant that EA won the deal.

EA would start to more and more dictate to Origin, what to do. Ultima VII/2 suffered because of a deadline, which caused the game to have several bugs and forced a re-write of the last third of the game. Ultima VIII also suffered under a deadline, with numerous plot elements axed and the expansion the Lost Vale, despite being finished, was scrapped by EA. The sudden success of Ultima Online made EA order Origin to put all efford into finishing it, which essentially killed production of Ultima IX up to that point. It also gave EA the idea to make Origin a pure online-game company, so Ultima IX was decided to be the last single-player game.

The development of Ultima IX suffered under impossible to hold deadlines and EA wanted the game to be out on Christmas 1999, which meant that in the end the game was a complete mess. Richard Garriott left shortly later, and EA went on to cancel Ultima Online 2 and Ultima X, before, having milked Ultima Online dry, closing Origin in 2004.

They continue to hold the Ultima trademark as proven by the completely non-related Lord of Ultima, where the tradmark is misused to promote a non-related browser game.