Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam(www.openttd.org)
88 pointsby canpan2 hours ago14 comments
  • TuxMark5an hour ago
    This doesn't feel right for me. OpenTTD is so much superior in every way compared to the original TTD, that noone in their right mind would ever play the original. So Atari now, while spending zero effort compared to the years of work that OpenTTD devs put in, will basically sell OpenTTD as if was their own creation. People who buy the new TTD will simply play OpenTTD anyway, since it's so much better.

    I might be wrong, but it feels like Atari are like parasites in this situation feeding off the hard work of OpenTTD devs.

    • fwipsy16 minutes ago
      Atari didn't put in the effort, but Chris Sawyer did. Now Atari paid Sawyer for the rights to the game. I do not think Atari is a parasite here just because they paid for the game instead of creating it.

      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.

      • TuxMark53 minutes ago
        My issue with this argument is that I'm not sure how much of OpenTTD is their IP. OpenTTD has been development for so long that I doubt that any original disassembly remnants remain in the latest version of OpenTTD. The only true piece of IP that OpenTTD may use is the name (the TTD part of OpenTTD) and the graphics, the latter of which being the more important one. However, as far as I know, OpenTTD devs have created their own version of all the assets that are also much higher resolution compared to the original. As a result, I see OpenTTD as an entirely separate game, that's been heavily inspired by original, but is its own separate entity.
    • altairprimean hour ago
      The downsides of putting “TTD” in the name “OpenTTD” is a certain level of vulnerability to the original creator (or a rights inheritor) deciding it’s worth their time to care again someday. I suspect this will do more for the TTD community than it will harm it, though; any modern sale of TTD is targeted precisely at the folks who would take mortal offense at harm to OpenTTD, and $10 (which would have been merely $5 in 2000) is the opposite of egregious after 100% inflation pushed AAA games towards $90 these days. I paid $5 for a used copy of SimTower back then, I would happily pay the same today for TTD resources, so this is all fine.

      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!)

    • jorl17an hour ago
      I can look at this from 2 additional perspectives:

      - 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...

    • 1313ed0125 minutes ago
      Maybe I am not in my right mind, but I installed and played the original (non-Deluxe) TT maybe six months ago. Still a fun game! I was always just a casual player. Installing and playing OpenTTD as well now and then, but I never really get deep enough into those games to care much about different versions. They are all fun and overall I prefer to play games I can play in DOSBox over native games.
    • 0110001131 minutes ago
      > while spending zero effort

      Why do you think it took such little effort? Is it simply utilizing an emulation/portability package like Proton?

      • TuxMark522 minutes ago
        I assume they will take the original and most likely unchanged TTD binaries and package them together with DOSBox and that's it. It's something that one dev could do in a weekend.
    • l729 minutes ago
      How do you feel about old Lucas arts adventure games that are purchasable on gog and other platforms and come bundled with scummvm?
  • ndiddy2 hours ago
    Obviously having OpenTTD available for free on Steam would jeopardize Atari's paid rerelease of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, so I think this is a good compromise. Hopefully they rigged it up so the assets from Transport Tycoon Deluxe get picked up automatically by OpenTTD when you install the bundle. I also hope that Atari will be sharing some of the revenue from the bundle with the OpenTTD team as part of this arrangement. They've spent the last 20+ years adding nice quality of life features and keeping the game playable, and I think they deserve to be rewarded for that effort. Going back to stock TTD after playing OpenTTD feels like a massive downgrade, like going from vim to BSD vi.
  • Bengalilol2 minutes ago
    Surprisingly, this is an interesting outcome. Atari could have been worse (better too).
  • xyzzy_plugh2 hours ago
    It would be nice if someone could provide some explanation as to why this situation is necessary. Did Atari's lawyers go full tilt?
    • II2IIan hour ago
      Who knows, though I always thought that it was rather odd that OpenTTD was on Steam. I'm not sure whether that's because it is an open source remake or because you had to own the original for the graphics/sound assets back in the day. (Apparently that changed over 15 years ago!)

      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.

      • Krutoniuman hour ago
        As someone who has been involved in OpenRCT2, which is another Chris Sawyer/Atari game, from what I can tell, Atari has a very hands off approach to these things.

        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.

        • 99990000099927 minutes ago
          I think most people who still buy RTC only do so to get the assets for OpenRTC2.

          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

        • squeaky-clean38 minutes ago
          I remember reading an interview some years ago where they basically said they wouldn't try to shut them down, but they also did not appreciate the projects existing.
  • stephbook3 minutes ago
    Honestly fair and understandable. OpenTTD builds on TTD (it's right there in the name.)

    You aren't forced to play OpenTTD and you aren't forced to get it on Steam/GoG.

    It's acceptable.

  • koolalaan hour ago
    Atari got a game I like called Awesomenauts and revived it from being shutdown F2P to $20. They paid an old dev to get it playable on a temporary contract. Though it has a few rough qualities I'm glad it's playable again.
    • niam5 minutes ago
      Wow small world. Hello from a fellow L1 (2012-2016). I didn't realize Ronimo had gone bankrupt, so I suppose I should be glad I have a chance to boot it up again.
  • jjmarr2 hours ago
    I like Simutrans more because the cargo and passengers have destinations in mind.

    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.

    • skulkan hour ago
      OpenTTD has the `cargodist` option which simulates reality more closely. Passengers enter stations with a destination in mind and will transfer at other stations.
      • Machaan hour ago
        Note that a big difference between cargodist and simutrans is in simutrans the customers have a destination before they come to your station, so opening up new routes will increase your customer base. In cargodist, you get the same amount of passengers, regardless of connected destinations, and they just choose from among connected destinations in your network.
    • TylerEan hour ago
      Why the simutrans folks decided on a weird hardcoded frame rate (40fps) that looks janky as hell on every single display ever I will never understand. Unplayable. instant motion sickness.
      • QuantumNomad_an hour ago
        I haven’t played simultrans, but I wonder if it feels less janky on a 120 Hz or 240 Hz monitor, since both of those values are evenly divisible by 40. Compared to playing on a 60 Hz display or other non-multiple of 40 refresh rate monitors.
      • monster_truckan hour ago
        Came here to say this, was an instant bounce for me.
  • anesxvito22 minutes ago
    Interesting to see an open-source game navigating Steam distribution. The tension between open-source freedom and platform-specific packaging is something every desktop app deals with — different installers, update mechanisms, code signing per OS.
  • nout36 minutes ago
    What is the story with OpenGFX then? It sounds like OpenTTD is completely new codebase and OpenGFX (which I also helped with) is completely new graphics. Why does one have to pay for that?
  • r2vcapan hour ago
    Atari? I never expected to see that ancient name again. If I remember correctly, I've been playing OpenTTD for more than a decade without the original TTD assets, and I usually build it from source, so this change won’t really affect me. Still, it feels a bit strange (even if it may be somewhat legitimate) to see Atari suddenly asserting rights over it.
    • PunchyHamsteran hour ago
      The corpse of the company has been puppeteered by various owners for decades now
  • basilikum2 hours ago
    OpenTTD with its beyond clunky UI has a special spot in my heart.

    There is even an Android version with the same very much not touch friendly (but somewhat customizable) UI.

  • xyzzy_plugh40 minutes ago
    Weirdly the OpenTTD Steam page seems to be missing entirely at the moment: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1536610/
  • sarru_kin35 minutes ago
    Just use gog
  • ocdtrekkie2 hours ago
    This seems quite positive to me: Clearly the rightsholders are not being total jerks since they're happy to allow an OpenTTD bundle, and the original game is available with modern fixes as well.
    • denotationalan hour ago
      Given the “rightsholders” have no rights over OpenTTD (only the assets are copyrightable, and OpenTTD has had its own set of open-source assets for the past 15 years), I can’t agree with this.

      I’m not sure how to interpret this other than Atari not wanting to compete with OpenTTD on Steam.

      • Tuna-Fishan hour ago
        It's more complicated than that. For an asset to be derived work from an original, it is not necessary for it to contain anything from the original. If you start from copyrighted assets, and meticulously replace them all with your own art piece by piece, while following the style and constraints of the originals, and while looking at the originals, I'd bet that a court would find your work to be derived from the originals and therefore under their copyright.

        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.

      • refulgentisan hour ago
        I can’t tell if this is narrowly worded to only talk about copyright because you don’t know it was built from decompiled TTD, that source code is copyrightable, and TTD is a trademark. or, you do know, but feel the current IP rights regime is illegitimate. And I don’t want to insult you by quietly assuming the first, so figured I’d spell it out.

        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.

    • rpcope1an hour ago
      I kind of doubt that. Chris Sawyer is on record being really hostile to open source reimaginations, especially OpenTTD (and it's just a reimagination at this point as OpenTTD shares no assets or code with it's predecessor). It wouldn't remotely surprise me if Atari was putting legal pressure on the OpenTTD devs.
      • Macha37 minutes ago
        I think really hostile is overstating it. He's clearly not a fan, but he seems content to (mostly privately) disapprove rather than take actions against it, which is what would to me qualify him as hostile.
    • tonypapousekan hour ago
      > If you already own OpenTTD on Steam, nothing changes. You’ll continue to receive game updates as usual. If you ever need to re-download the game, the game will remain in your Steam library.

      This part of the announcement was nice, too. It would suck if existing users had it deleted from their libraries.

      • Nitionan hour ago
        Steam is really good about that kind of thing. Not quite the same, but I have a couple of games on my account that haven't been sold on the store for years, and I can still download them any time. I don't think there's any way for publishers to really remove a game that's already been purchased.
        • Krutoniuman hour ago
          You're correct. It's part of the Steam Publisher Agreement that basically, you can't remove your game from users who have paid for it.

          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.)

    • rasz2 hours ago
      More likely they were jerks and blackmailed openttd into bundle on the threat of forcing them off steam altogether.
      • LASR2 hours ago
        Yep. There is no being nice in the business of copyright.
      • ocdtrekkiean hour ago
        They legally own the assets. Taking them off Steam if the title is no longer abandoned by the publisher is a 100% reasonable decision, so you need to understand this is above and beyond what the publisher needs to do.

        An outcome like this more than likely means the folks working on the rerelease are fans of OpenTTD and worked internally to protect it.

        • integralidan hour ago
          Are you sure the stream version has proprietary assets? I was under impression that they had some open assets, but I may be wrong.
          • Krutoniuman hour ago
            OpenTTD has had entirely their own assets for 15 years.
            • hatsuseno18 minutes ago
              But OpenTTD itself isn't a clean-room implementation of the game, it's a branch off a decompilation of the original game.

              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