EA could sell “dormant IPs” like Ultima and Wing Commander after Saudi acquisition, former manager says: “There are plenty of IPs like that at EA that nobody cares about at this moment”
Electronic Arts could sell off "dormant" franchises such as Ultima and Wing Commander following its acquisition by a Saudi-backed investor group, according to a former EA manager. The comments suggest that some long-dormant intellectual property held by the publisher may be viewed as expendable or ripe for sale under new ownership, as such IPs are said to receive little current attention or investment from the company.
The former manager argued that EA holds numerous franchises of this kind that are effectively inactive and not a priority for anyone at the company at present, implying they could be offloaded rather than developed further. The remarks come amid wider industry speculation about how EA's ownership change might reshape its approach to legacy series and back-catalogue assets, though no formal sale plans have been confirmed by EA itself.
- Former EA manager says dormant IPs like Ultima could be sold
- Comments follow EA's Saudi-backed acquisition
- No official EA confirmation of any planned IP sales
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Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, working with other backers, has completed a major buyout of Electronic Arts, one of the world's largest video game publishers. EA owns a huge back catalogue of franchises built up over decades, ranging from major current releases to older series that have not had a new game in years. Ultima and Wing Commander are examples of the latter: once-popular franchises from the 1980s and 1990s that EA still owns the rights to but has not actively developed recently.
A former EA manager has suggested that the change in ownership could prompt the company to reconsider what to do with these inactive franchises, potentially selling off ones it sees little value in continuing to hold. This ties into a broader pattern in the games industry, where publishers sit on large numbers of old IPs (intellectual properties, meaning the characters, worlds and branding associated with a game) that are not being used, and ownership changes often trigger reviews of which assets are worth keeping.
This matters because such decisions affect what happens to games and franchises with dedicated, if smaller, fanbases, and because EA's new ownership structure is being watched closely for signs of how it might reshape the company's priorities more broadly, beyond just its dormant properties.