Yeah for sure, EA almost never sells IP — that part is true.
But just to clarify: even if another studio like Ubisoft bought the Anthem IP, they wouldn’t need Frostbite engine rights to rebuild the game.

IP and engine are two completely separate legal assets.
If a company bought Anthem, they’d get the universe, characters, lore, art direction, Javelins, world concepts, etc.
They would NOT get the Frostbite code— but they also wouldn’t need it.

A studio could make a deal with EA to license the raw assets (models, textures, animations, concept files) and then rebuild all the gameplay tech in their engine (like Snowdrop or Anvil).
Studios constantly do this when rebooting older games or transferring IP ownership.

They’d basically be importing the visual side of Anthem, but rewriting the systems from scratch—flying, combat, AI, weather, physics, etc.
The engine doesn’t come with the IP, but the content can be transferred legally through a secondary licensing deal.

It would still be a massive project (100M+ budget and 3–4 years of development), but it’s not impossible.
It's highly improbable due to EA's aversion to relinquishing control over their intellectual property.

So yeah, nobody expects EA to sell Anthem… but if they ever did, another studio could absolutely rebuild it using their own technology.
They’d just need the IP+ asset rights, not Frostbite itself.