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EA's Old Games Return to Stores and Make Preservation Look Like a New Release

November 7, 2026 at 6:01 AM EST · New York time

Re-releases of Wing Commander and Ultima titles have arrived on Steam and GOG, putting classic PC games back in storefronts where players can find them. The releases bring renewed attention to preservation at EA, the publisher associated with the franchises. Keeping older games available is not as simple as leaving a box on a shelf. Computer hardware, operating systems and digital storefronts change, and games that once seemed permanent can become difficult for new players to buy or run. A re-release gives an old title another place in the current market. It also offers a different kind of product pitch from the usual promise of a larger, newer game. Here the attraction is that the earlier work is worth returning to at all. Fans can revisit familiar worlds, and newcomers have a clearer route to titles that helped shape PC gaming. There is a pleasing reversal for an industry often eager to announce what comes next. The publisher gets good news by making room for what came before. For once, the feature list does not need to promise an entirely new universe. It can simply say that the old one is available again, which is a surprisingly ambitious undertaking when decades of computers have passed in between.

Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.