I might be wrong, but it feels like Atari are like parasites in this situation feeding off the hard work of OpenTTD devs.
I get that Atari isn’t perhaps as loved as, say, Bullfrog or Dynamix, but better that companies respect their properties and their fans with an outcome like this, than be another boringly-common community-destroying Nintendo Lawyer Takedown Club.
(It’s also now in line with the various WAD and Descent games over time that used this model, where the engine is maximum rewrite amazing but the game resources require a GOG purchase. The point of rewrites isn’t to deprive the games of revenue!)
I don't know about Descent, but this hasn't been true wrt Doom for decades: https://freedoom.github.io/about.html
Worth noting that the Atari of today is a shell corporation that has precisely zero to do with the original.
- OpenTTD (a game I truly love and have followed since before the 0.3 days) was not born as a clean-room reimplementation of TTD. It started as a disassembly effort, something which is perhaps morally gray, especially if you take into account the original TTD was coded in assembly (with sprinkles of C). Perhaps this way there is some vague contribution that goes towards Chris Sawyer?
- This is a way you can legally get the original graphics of the game (GRF). Although I think the shareware version technically also worked...
It seems to me that the logical outcome of your interpretation is that Sawyer's leniency towards the OpenTTD devs would be punished by losing exclusivity to his IP. Essentially, you are asserting "squatter's rights" to IP - if IP rights are not enforced, then they lapse. This is an interesting idea in principle, but I'm concerned that it might have prevented OpenTTD from ever being created. Original creators would be incentivized to chase off derivative works to protect their IP.
> parasites
This is pretty typical for Atari... any software that ever graced their consoles magically becomes their IP, ripe for exploitation, even if they didn't write it...
Why do you think it took such little effort? Is it simply utilizing an emulation/portability package like Proton?
However in OpenTTDs case, the entire implementation is original (including the new high res assets).
I would have 0 issues with this TTD/OpenTTD situation if OpenTTD was left on Steam as-is and TTD was a separate purchase that granted the original assets for use in OpenTTD.
Even if Atari's lawyers were involved, it may have been a friendly exchange. The post claims that OpenTTD was available on Steam for 5 years. That is more than enough time for them to apply legal pressure. It's also worth noting that the open source version is still available from the project website, as are the open assets.
We know they know about us - We saw their Head of PR giving away keys for RCT2 on Twitch while playing OpenRCT2, prior to the release of RCT World (What a terrible game sadly).
As far as we can tell, it's basically a "don't cause us problems and we won't bother you" situation.
TTD and OpenTTD do not which incentivizes mechanisms to dump everyone at the edge of the map.
Aside from that they're both transport games with bad UIs.
OpenTTD can be downloaded for free off the website, but if you want it through Steam it’s only available in a $10 bundle.
But the lobbyism is too strong for a reasonable 15 or 20 year copyright limit.
Chris Sawyer was last involved in the IP when it was rugpulled out from under him in the early 2000s and sent to Frontier Developments, the Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster guys, to bury the IP in an unmarked grave with RCT3; Frontier is also the same guys that screwed Haemimont Games games over, the Tropico and Surviving Mars guys, leading to the studio being bought out and rebooted by Paradox to continue Surviving Mars development.
The IP ownership has been legally retained by Atari SA, aka Infogrames, aka GT Interactive, aka GoodTimes Entertainment, which has a very long history of screwing game developers and stealing their IP out from under them and also misrepresenting IP ownership and licensing.
Now, it is also worth mentioning that Chris Sawyer is anti-open source, so he probably personally approves of trying to steal money from OpenTTD players, even if he isn't personally getting a cut of it.
It's pretty rude to put something like that on him if he hasn't actually said that.
There is even an Android version with the same very much not touch friendly (but somewhat customizable) UI.
In order to play OpenTTD you needed the original assets. Now they are bundled
People already having the assets were most likely always technical enough to get the OpenTTD builds
Only casual users would discover OpenTTD on stream to be frustrated by not being able to play it without an additional purchase
This is a much better compromise than usual in the gaming industry.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/70574/Transport_Tycoon...
But the OpenTTD item listed in the bundle is non-existent at the moment.
At least I already have it in my library so, looks like I still get updates.
You aren't forced to play OpenTTD and you aren't forced to get it on Steam/GoG.
It's acceptable.
What about other platforms and stores?
The same change has been made on the GOG.com store. All other distribution platforms are unchanged, and you can continue to download OpenTTD from our web site. However if you enjoy playing OpenTTD but you were never able to purchase a copy of the original Transport Tycoon game, you now have the opportunity to do so!No he's not. This is internet gossip.
I’m not sure how to interpret this other than Atari not wanting to compete with OpenTTD on Steam.
A lot of the fan-driven reimplementations of classic games are trivially derived works, because people seem to think that the copyright only covers the pixels in the originals and if you replace them you're fine.
I’m usually sentimentally open to IP rights being overly constrictive in the current regime, but faced with a company that owns TTD™ saying “hey, instead of going full lawyer nastygram to avoid confusion, let’s work this out so people get your stuff when they download ours”…seems pretty nice. Like I can’t imagine Microsoft allowing alt-universe OpenWindows™ on the Windows Store.
Not to mention it’s a reverse engineered version of the base game.
An outcome like this more than likely means the folks working on the rerelease are fans of OpenTTD and worked internally to protect it.
This part of the announcement was nice, too. It would suck if existing users had it deleted from their libraries.