An outcome like this more than likely means the folks working on the rerelease are fans of OpenTTD and worked internally to protect it.
If Atari was really out to copyright the project into oblivion, they're likely to succeed in a legal sense*.
Within the confines of the current laws and known history of the game, and being a fan of both works, I think this compromise is fair.
*NotALawyerClause
This part of the announcement was nice, too. It would suck if existing users had it deleted from their libraries.
And if you push an update that deletes the files, Valve can, will, and has rolled back the update.
Of course, there's also situations where Valve has assisted in removing titles at developers request, but it was a situation Valve was involved in - Specifically, a game called "The Ship" had a Multiplayer version, and it was built on Source, but they could never quite get it to work correctly, even with Valve's help. Wouldn't sync.
Valve helped them remove the Multiplayer version. (but you still kept the single player.)
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.
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.
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.
Atari is in a really weird spot, the rights have changed hands so much.
It would be nice if they offered a paid version of OpenRTC with the assets bundled. Ohh well
I might be wrong, but it feels like Atari are like parasites in this situation feeding off the hard work of OpenTTD devs.
- 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...
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!)
Why do you think it took such little effort? Is it simply utilizing an emulation/portability package like Proton?
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.
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/70574/Transport_Tycoon...
But the OpenTTD item listed in the bundle is non-existent at the moment.
basilikum•1h ago
There is even an Android version with the same very much not touch friendly (but somewhat customizable) UI.