Sierra On-Line, Inc.

Sierra On-Line was a famous developer of computer games, which was eventually absorbed and disbanded by its parent company (currently Activision).

Sierra On-Line came into contact with the Ultima series in 1982, when Richard Garriott was looking for a publisher for Ultima II. Garriott intended to put a cloth map into every Ultima II box, but as this was expensive, most publishers were not willing to pay for it. However, Garriott was able to talk Sierra into doing it.

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. Garriott severed relations with Sierra, and with the money he had made with the Ultima games up to that point he founded Origin, in order to both develop and publish games on his own.

For years Sierra was unwilling to sell the rights to Ultima II back to Garriott, though eventually they did. But even after that, Sierra still held the rights to the game's cover image, preventing Origin from putting it in the many Ultima compilations it later released. All later releases of Ultima II had the Sierra logo removed from the map, and all mentions of Sierra were replaced in the game by references to Origin.

As a side-note, Ultima: Escape from Mt. Drash was published by Sierra in 1983, without Garriott even knowing that this strange piece of software existed. They did it without his approval to milk the brand name, but the game was so obscure that even Garriott himself only learned years later of its existence.

Trivia

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