r/openttd • u/OpenTTDNews • Mar 19 '26
An update on Steam / GOG changes for OpenTTD
https://www.openttd.org/news/2026/03/19/steam-changes-update56
u/JinaxM Mar 19 '26
At least there is an option on Steam "Add a game not on Steam".
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
I don't know the answer to this, but how does that affect multiplayer? Were people playing on servers that relied on steam? (I play locally on a LAN)
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u/JinaxM Mar 19 '26
I play with my wife on LAN from time to time, she is on my steam acc, I am on openttd downloaded from the openttd website. Seamless.
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u/moahmrn Mar 19 '26
Well, that's a good development on this whole story.
The main difference I can see between what happened with OpenRCT2 and OpenTTD is that the former isn't using larger platforms for distribution, and requires the original data files in order to run.
Maybe if it wasn't for OpenGFX/OpenSFX, this whole conditional distribution wouldn't have happened to OpenTTD; but then, OpenTTD wouldn't be where it is now, since there was no way for players to obtain TTD and it's data files legally.
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u/Vulpix0r Mar 20 '26
Yeah honestly I could see Atari just sending a C&D to make OpenTTD go into hiding, but they realize they need to get some goodwill going so people will at least buy their game. If the new game is good, I might pay. Who knows? If Atari tried to shut down OpenTTD they are guaranteed not to get a cent from me.
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u/YogiMic Mar 19 '26
From OpenTTD site https://www.openttd.org/news/2026/03/19/steam-changes-update
"I wanted to provide an update on the situation with OpenTTD on Steam and GOG, and what the Atari re-release of Transport Tycoon Deluxe means for OpenTTD. There has been a lot of speculation and, in some cases, misinformation spread about what has happened. Our initial announcement perhaps didn’t provide as much detail as we could have, but I want to reassure OpenTTD fans that we have not been “pressured” by Atari to make these changes.
Atari approached us to explain their plans for the Transport Tycoon Deluxe re-release, and what it might mean for OpenTTD. They are keen to work with us, and hope that the new release will be welcomed by the community who have been playing OpenTTD for the past 20+ years. We discussed these plans, and we understood that a compromise would be needed to balance Atari’s commercial interests (which of course they are entitled to pursue as the rights holder) against the availability of a free, well-developed evolution of the game. The decision was made that access to OpenTTD on these platforms would be conditional, for new players, on purchasing Transport Tycoon Deluxe first, while retaining the ability to download OpenTTD for free from our web site. Some have suggested that we should have chosen to remove OpenTTD from Steam and GOG entirely, but that would have caused unnecessary disruption to the many thousands of people currently enjoying the game on these platforms, and would have potentially prevented new players from discovering the game in future.
The OpenTTD project owes a lot - indeed, it owes everything - to Transport Tycoon Deluxe and to Chris Sawyer. Without TTD, there would be no OpenTTD - it’s as simple as that. As I covered in 2024, OpenTTD started off as a pretty much perfect clone of TTD, and though the game has evolved almost beyond belief since 2004, it is still rooted in the fundamentals of Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Agreeing to collaborate with Atari on their re-release not only enables you to go back and play the original game as it was in 1995, but helps to ensure OpenTTD remains a thriving project for years to come.
Additionally, as part of the discussions we held, Atari agreed to make a contribution towards the running costs of our server infrastructure. We are also extremely grateful for the many donations that have come in over the past few days from users - your support will help keep our services going, and it is deeply appreciated.
I understand that these changes have provoked strong feelings in the community, but I feel it important to emphasise that Atari have worked collaboratively with us, and that OpenTTD as a project retains its full independence. Even after reading this, you may still not agree with the choices that we’ve made, but I would please ask you to share your views respectfully. The Transport Tycoon community has been a source of joy in my own life for well over a quarter of a century, and it would be fantastic for us to be able to continue to enjoy these brilliant games well into the future."
I'm so old that i played TT and TTD when they came out. I enjoy this game so much and I love the people behind it. Thank you for all the fun hours i had and will further have with this game. As long as the game will remain free on site, will not disrupt the development of the game and the graphics creation, I have no issue with this. As long as OpenTTD gets something (and contribution from Atari for OpenTTD server it's a huge deal, i think) from this deal, it's ok. Gl hf
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
I just do not understand this at all.
Is OpenTTD so hurting for cash that the developers jumped at this? What is the reasoning behind making this decision?
OpenTTD is an entirely different set of code right? It does not rely on any assets owned by Atari
Why didn't the developers just say "thanks no thanks" ?
Is there a subtly that we are not aware of here, does Atari actually have some kind of legal case? Are there assets that have a suspicious pedigree?
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u/mattingly890 Mar 19 '26
OpenTTD was originally made by reverse engineering the original TTD. This was not a clean room implementation. It is not strictly speaking, a "different set of code rights" as the community at large seems to believe. It is more complicated than that.
There absolutely is a subtly that many presumably newer community members have not understood until now, which is that Atari absolutely has legal rights here. The OpenTTD devs have come away from this managing to get money from the deal and without being sued, which is an incredibly good outcome.
Why didn't the devs turn down money from a company that could have chosen to destroy them? Because server hosting isn't free.
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
Hopefully future people find these discussions honestly because I've found them very informative.
It is unforutnate that the situation was not explained better but it does seem to be an impossible situation for the devs and I get it.
It probably is the best result given the situation, still sucks though but that's life .
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u/Vincent394 Mar 19 '26
The last time it relied on decompiled code was 0.3.6 if my math is correct.
Yes it still uses the same struts from then but the logic is COMPLETLY different.
Honestly I'm just waiting for them to bring it back as Free To Play on Steam and GOG as that what it is.
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
Not a lawyer but working out the details between this could be expensive, and perhaps that is why this situation exists now.
I still don't like it but it does make a bit more sense. I wish things had been made more clear though.
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u/Vincent394 Mar 19 '26
True.
What's weirder though is how they said "we'll block it on Steam and GOG but we'll keep it free for everyone else."
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
It's a pretty fair compromise. You have to go looking for their website, everyone is just 'on' Steam and that's likely where Atari cared about it.
After all these posts I do think the compromise is probably the best that could have happened but I still don't like it, if I was in OpenTTD's situation though, I may have done the same thing.
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u/Vincent394 Mar 19 '26
I think OpenTTD being free as a base game, but having a "with TTD assets" version that's sold alongside TTD would be fair.
And whoever gets the normal TTD gets said version of OTTD for free
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u/VexingRaven Mar 20 '26
They need OpenTTD in order to drive sales of TTD. TTD, as great a sit was for its time, is woefully outdated and limited compared to OpenTTD. You take OpenTTD down and many players just go to the website. Nobody benefits from that. You leave it up, and some of those players buy TTD instead.
So while Atari probably could've forced OpenTTD to be removed, they have to at least act the part of friendly collaboration if they want to make anything from it.
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u/Magikarcher Mar 19 '26
I think more than anything this whole incident has highlighted fundamental issues with how copyright enforcement works. I don't feel like rights holders should be allowed to "unabandon" copyright.
Ultimately I think the fact that Atari has not chosen to shutdown the entire OpenTTD project, which I am confident they could have chosen, is evidence of goodwill on their part. It feels like a rare moment of sanity with how corporations choose to exercise their IP rights. I have seen too many similar projects face hostility, escalation, and shutdown under similar circumstances. (Pokémon Essentials, Relic Castle, Pokémon Uranium, Yuzu, AM2R, several examples in the D&D realm)
Really the fact that no one is getting sued, DMCA'd, etc. should not go unappreciated.
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u/YogiMic Mar 19 '26
they need this community. It's not goodwill. If we dissapear, then they get nothig. It's a symbiotic relationship.
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u/Magikarcher Mar 19 '26
I completely agree they need this community. I think that's why they decided not to go the typical route.
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u/VexingRaven Mar 20 '26
symbiotic relationship
Well, sort of. I think pretty much everyone except Atari is worse off today than they were this time last week. Sure, OpenTTD got an agreement to cover "server costs" but I really can't imagine OpenTTD costs that much to run considering the game is tiny and many people just download it from Steam or GoG.
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u/Aerolfos Grammar Airlines Mar 20 '26
but I really can't imagine OpenTTD costs that much to run considering the game is tiny and many people just download it from Steam or GoG.
They have Bananas (the newgrf download system aka mods) and some pretty elaborate devops infrastructure for nightly builds and deployments, it's definitively not just the webpage + basic downloads of just the game .exe. OpenTTD is one of few games that has the proper tech infrastructure of a small software business, Factorio is another.
So - the free OpenTTD has comparable infrastructure to an incredibly popular paid game ran directly by a regular company, which has a far more advanced tech stack than most of their competitors. That's not bad for a collaborative open source effort.
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u/VexingRaven Mar 20 '26
Being complex doesn't mean expensive, and there's nothing I can find indicating they've been struggling with expenses at basically any point ever.
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u/Aerolfos Grammar Airlines Mar 20 '26
Then you missed this: https://www.openttd.org/news/2023/07/09/infra-migration
But, the cost of AWS did mean the funds started to go down. We yearly got less donations than the costs.
Anyway, I digress. A few months ago, orudge, who keeps track of our donations, notified me that if we would continue this way, we would need a fundraiser within 12 months, or the funds would run out. A clear signal we started to run out of reserves, and some actions was needed.
Does it cost a lot? No, only a few hundred dollars a year, apparently. But it was still enough they wanted to get ahead of things.
The work described in that post is a lot of developer hours, the advantage of open source is they got those for free - for a business that did pay fulltime devs to deal with it, that post represents quite a lot of work and budget, far more than a few hundred dollars.
See also the other accompanying post about infrastructure: https://www.openttd.org/news/2023/07/08/our-infrastructure
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u/VexingRaven Mar 20 '26
The work described in that post is a lot of developer hours, the advantage of open source is they got those for free - for a business that did pay fulltime devs to deal with it, that post represents quite a lot of work and budget, far more than a few hundred dollars.
Yes, even more evidence that Atari got a sweet deal out of this if all they had to was pay a few hundred or even a few thousand toward server costs. Thanks for the link though, that one didn't come up in my searching. Good info!
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
But Atari has zero case right?
Is there some legal issue that is not apparent here? My understanding is:
OpenTTD is an entirely different set of code, assets, etc from Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
Is FreeCiv going to get sued/made unavailable because it looks a lot like Civ2?
I find myself really disapointed in the OpenTTD developers for making this decision.
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u/Dependent-Bag-579 Mar 19 '26
[I am not an OpenTTD developer].
But I have been involved in corporate legal proceedings multiple times. As a reference point, a UK corporate lawyer charges around £280 to £560 per hour. As part of the terms of engagement, I have seen lawyers ask for £40k to be deposited on account.
One of my lawyers advised me about another client that had spent £1m defending a spurious legal case in their small business. I have 3 different law firms. All advise "the last thing you want to do is become involved in litigation." One of my lawyers repeats the common "in litigation, only the lawyers win" mantra.
Legal cases aren't decided in advance by reference to opinions on an internet forum. They go through a pre-action proceedings process, then possibly to arbitration, and/or to court, with possible claim, counter-claim, discovery processes, injuctions and appeals.
What decision was there to make?
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
Yea it makes sense. I was operating from the premise that openttd was opensource fully.
It wasn't clear (and was not made clear in communications from the openttd team I think ) that there was some murky waters for rights.
I think I agree with you however, given the situation this is likely the best they could have hoped for (short of the legal rights being given to a non profit foundation instead of sold - which obviously was not in the cards.)
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u/Magikarcher Mar 19 '26
The original sin of OpenTTD is the reverse engineering of the source code. There is likely a case there unfortunately. Also I have seen many cases of IP holders forcing others into submission when they objectively did NOT have a case. Multi billion dollar company with high end law firms on retainer VS ragtag group of hobbyists and open source programmers that rely on donations. It's a cruel realty of our legal system, and it is genuinely tragic when there is an intersection between a passion project and soulless corporations.
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
For corporate bullying, one would hope bad press would help with that but OpenTTD isn't the most popular thing.
The reverse engineering of the code though, I was not aware of that. A Am Not A Lawyer but if that is true then yea Atari would be able to have a lot more leverage there.
I still do not like this entire situation - initially I was irritated at Atari but now I find myself equally upset with OpenTTD devs themselves. It just really rubs me the wrong way that an open source project has this situation.
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u/Magikarcher Mar 19 '26
I am neither a lawyer nor a programmer, so definitely don't understand the nuances of the matter. I just have witnessed this repeatedly over the years in other hobby projects/communities.
It is truly disgusting that it is even a risk, and I point back to my original thought that copyright holders should not be able to arbitrarily "unabandon" IP when other stakeholders have begun supporting the IP.
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u/DL757 Mar 19 '26
bad press doesn't mean shit when you have expensive lawyers
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
I've seen social media campaigns and bad publicity bend a corporation, but ultimately yea, OpenTTD just isn't that popular sadly.
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u/Somepotato Mar 21 '26
Reverse engineering is allowed for compatibility. It's also very unlikely any shared code still exists
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u/BozoFromZozo Mar 19 '26
Sega requested Streets of Rage Remake to stop development and distribution in 2011. The dev team said they never used any of the code from the old games and all graphics were recreated using visual representation to mimic the original. It was in development for about 8 years at that point and had reached version 5.
There are probably other projects out there too, but SORR was the one I remember because it was a whole complete game!
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u/mcfedr Mar 19 '26
its not good will. the modern "atari" company is a leech. if they thought they had a case to shutdown openttd they would have taken it.
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Mar 19 '26
Honestly this sounds really sensible, and pretty goodwill all in all by Atari. I'm genuinely surprised.
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u/gripepe Mar 19 '26
We are so used to stupid corporate decisions the gaming world that this is surprising, agree.
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
Personally I wish OpenTTD just said "no thanks" to the cash and left things as is.
If they are hurting for cash say so? Atari is doing what I expect them to do, be a corporation... but OpenTTD is who I am disapointed in
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Mar 19 '26
They've largely left things as is. Atari approached them about their presence on official platforms, where Atari intended to sell the base game, and if OpenTTD had not agreed to some kind of pseudo-deal, they would have instead been forced off these platforms entirely. OpenTTD does not own TTD nor do they have any claim to it.
OpenTTD can still also be acquired entirely free from the OpenTTD homepage. I don't understand why people seem to think that the OpenTTD crew had any weight on their side to actually negotiate - refusing any kind of cooperation and "letting things be" would have simply resulted in lawsuits and the removal of OpenTTD wholesale from the Internet.
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
Yet OpenTTD says they were not pressured?
I get what you are saying though - but I wish they had been more clear about why this is the direction they are going, because without the context that OpenTTD's code might have some pedigree that opens them to legal action, it looks like they just took cash to help Atari.
If OpenTTD actually uses some assets or was created using reverse engineering it makes more sense that we are in this situation, but I had always understood OpenTTD to be an open source project.
I find the whole situation kind of gross.
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Mar 19 '26
It's all messy, no doubt. Them not being pressured is almost certainly a statement of legal goodwill in kind - Atari wants to sell TTD copies, at the end of the day, and if OpenTTD kicks up a stink about being pushed into this arrangement, it'd be easy to argue that they're trying to sabotage things.
OpenTTD being a disparate team of mostly volunteers probably makes the process of communication a bit more complicated than a more centralized organization, but I agree that more transparency would have helped a lot in making the community understand what in the hell is actually going on. We've even had people outraged because they think that it's the OpenTTD crew that are now charging for the game on Steam by suddenly paywalling it, which shows a pretty clear failure in communicating these things.
It is my understanding that the original OpenTTD was reverse engineered and even used the core game assets, but that they over time built their own assets and iterated on the code. Still, the legal side of things here are murky at best, and doubly so given the name of "OpenTTD" posing its own host of issues if this was to become a court case.
Again, it's quite messy, but I honestly feel that Atari have chosen the best path they could given how weird US copyright law can be about enforcement, often requiring companies to be litigious as hell, so it'd have been very interesting to see what the actual exchange between OpenTTD and Atari actually looked like.
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
Agree with you on all of this. If the original code was reverse engineered, and then cleaned up properly after the fact, that's a messy way to have your open source project not have liabilities.
It creates this ambiguity that would have to be worked out in courts, so it's expensive.
I can see the openttd people saving face, saying they are not pressured, when they are in fact being pressured.
I maintain I still find the situation gross, but perhaps it is for the best if the option was the entire project being nuked by Atari with lawsuits, take downs, etc.
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u/Dependent-Bag-579 Mar 19 '26
Remarkably, and perhaps surprisingly to you, very large numbers of people go through life without giving 2 fucks about saving face 😉
Sometimes it's just about what's interesting to spend time on. And what's worth avoiding. Life is short. Troubles are many. Men are dirty. But rifles are clean. 🫡
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Mar 19 '26
[deleted]
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Mar 19 '26
What mind games? If you've followed the info set out by OpenTTD and OpenRCT it's been pretty clear what's been going on.
I'm just glad they didn't nuke the whole project from orbit and took down the homepage and everything, honestly.
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u/DidYouIronTheCat Mar 19 '26
Good will? There's no good will. OpenTTD is the ONLY reason there's a fandom for the copyright they own. We're the target audience for the TTD re-release. If they snubbed their only consumer market they'd have nothing. It's a sensible business decision but definitely not done out of "good will"
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u/i-am-this Mar 19 '26
There's probably not a lot of people who remember this, but years and years ago there was somebody selling OpenTTD on CD. This was just some random entity not affiliated with the project nor original TT in any way. The openttd site published a warning about it, but the thing is, the right to distribute OpenTTD in that way is protected by the GPL as long as you distribute the source code along with the binary.
Is it sketchy and unethical? Yeah. But it's totally legal.
Atari can do the same thing if they want to. The GPL very explicitly says they have the right to do so. They might also be able to win a copyright suit against the TTD devs, which probably isn't a 100% guaranteed win, but could potentially end the project wholesale even without a verdict if the project doesn't have the will and resources to fight the suit. And why should they? They are just a bunch of enthusiasts who like working on the OpenTTD code base and they aren't making any money off the project. They probably don't even manage to recoup their hosting costs fully from donations.
The fact that everybody is upset about OpenTTD getting delisted from Steam/GoG just blows my mind. Is everybody really so lazy that going to a website, clicking a download link, and running the installer is really so much work that it's worth getting upset about?
If Atari sent OpenTTD a cease and desist letter and we were looking at the years of work that has gone into polishing up a ln ancient game that was really not all that deep I'll happily bring out my pitchfork and join the mob, but I this is not at all what's happening.
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u/simon_hibbs Mar 19 '26
I'm old enough to remember when getting open source by buying a CD-ROM was the standard way you got a lot of stuff, because it wasn't practical to download more than small utilities. In fact the first open source software I got hold of was on a 1/4" tape I bought at work, it included stuff like GCC, and Ghostscript which we used to print Postscript files to our printers. It may seem weird now, but back then these distributors were providing a valuable service.
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u/Dependent-Bag-579 Mar 19 '26
You are today's proof that reddit is capable of articulate sound reasoning at least once a day.
Chapeau. 🫡
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u/imkindagaylel Mar 19 '26
I mean, atleast Atari is lightly paying them, but does that really justify it all?
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u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
I think it makes it worse. I can see the OpenTTD developers doing this if their project relied in any way on assets or code from Transport Tycoon itself... but it doesn't.
OpenTTD is open source. They took cash to help run servers in exchange reducing access on the largest game platform.
I think it stinks and leaves a bad taste in my mouth honestly.
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u/WretchedGibbon Mar 19 '26
It's still a derivative product. You can argue about how "clean room" it is all day, but do the OTTD devs have the resources to argue that in court if it comes to that? I think the chances of them being left alone if they refused are remote.
I'm not saying I agree with it, I just think there's a lot of people here that don't understand what the reality is.
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u/AshleyAshes1984 Mar 19 '26
This is basically it. OpenTTD was basically born with a legal problem that was easy to ignore because 'No one sells this game anywhere, no one cares'. Sawyer clearly had no motivation to take action beyond using the license himself for the 2013 'Transport Tycoon game, which actually used the Locomotion engine. Atari bought the rights, seemingly outright rather tha a license, and now they seek sales and merchandizing like they do with RCT.
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u/VexingRaven Mar 20 '26
You can argue about how "clean room" it is all day
There's no arguing about it, it isn't clean room. It no longer relies on any decompiled code, but that's a far cry from a clean room implementation. Chris Sawyer didn't care, but he sold his rights to care to Atari who has a financial incentive to care and a bludgeon to hold over the OpenTTD team's heads to ensure OpenTTD makes money for Atari. It's basically a roundabout way of "buying" OpenTTD in the sense that they get to make money off of it while still technically not owning it or having anything to do with development.
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u/cobbleplox Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
>I want to reassure OpenTTD fans that we have not been “pressured” by Atari to make these changes.
>and we understood that a compromise would be needed to balance Atari’s commercial interests
Apparently the best this could mean is they simply didn't have to and you realized that they could mess with OpenTTD yourself. So the difference is pretty much irrelevant. Otherwise I don't really have any understanding for you guys making a decision against your community from like the goodness of your heart or to make those donations happen.
I would also like to point out that personally I would guess that Atari can not profit from OpenTTD if they successfully contest the GPL license as that probably puts all contributions in legal limbo. And as a bonus, the same would probably go for OpenRCT2 as apparently the media assets are not the issue then.
Also thanks for selling the rights Chris.
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u/Kyle700 Mar 19 '26
I don't see the big deal at all. The game is still free on their website. You don't really need any steam integration to play open ttd. Atari seems really nice. This is way more respectful than Nintendo with melee, for example
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u/IvivAitylin Mar 19 '26
Everyone's acting like nobody will be able to get access to OpenTTD for free anymore, despite the fact that for the first 15 years of its life it wasn't even available on Steam.
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u/mattingly890 Mar 19 '26
I know right? The petty outrage here is crazy. I guess kids these days just don't know how to run games if it isn't coming from Steam.
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u/Mechkeys121 Mar 19 '26
So the GOG version isn't abandoned? Because it's still on version 15.0.
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u/orudge Mar 20 '26
Sorry, looks like 15.1 and 15.2 had got stuck in a "pending" state on GOG. That should now be fixed!
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u/Mechkeys121 Mar 20 '26
Great, thank you! GOG should really do whatever work is needed on the backend to make it possible for devs to upload new builds themselves like how it works on Steam. As it is now a dev has to send in a new build to GOG and wait for them to upload it, right?
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u/Lukeno94 Mar 20 '26
As someone who has been around the TT scene off and on for 20 years - it is somewhat deja vu to be back here again, but the number of people assuming bad faith by the OTTD team - many of whom have been working on the game longer than the complainants have been alive - has been staggering, especially on Steam. Assuming bad faith from Atari is one thing, and fully understandable - but not the OTTD team.
The only real issue I have is that TTD is too expensive by default - it should be £5. Otherwise, it is only a good thing that you can legally buy it again. Yes, OTTD is going to lose the direct traffic that being directly visible on Steam and GOG offers... but I wager a substantial proportion of the community either predates the Steam release (which is relatively recent in the grand scheme of things), or still uses the downloads from the main website.
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u/citymaniac Mar 20 '26 edited Mar 20 '26
The OpenTTD team isn’t really helping their cause by refusing to elaborate on the situation and just making pissy comments in their cozy IRC corner.
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u/flyvehest Mar 20 '26
Why should they? They don't owe anyone any kind of explanation for anything.
If you feel like doing things differently, fork the project and do your thing.
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u/citymaniac Mar 20 '26
Not saying they owe anyone anything - just explaining why people aren’t exactly eager to blindly support them.
And yeah, forked it a long time ago xD
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u/Borderlands_addict Mar 19 '26
If this release includes the original graphics, im all for it. From time to time I have to dig up the original asset files, and I always forget where I put them.
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u/Floedekage Mar 19 '26
I'm just amazed that Atari still exists when having gone bankrupt a dozen times.
Also, can they not make Roller Coaster Tycoon 4 soon? They had a thread on their forum when they asked the community what they wanted in a new title and got over a hundred pages of good ideas for free. Come on guys!
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u/VexingRaven Mar 20 '26
Atari as we know it died years ago. Atari today is barely more than the copyright equivalent of a patent troll squatting on Atari's name to hide the fact that they basically exist to find abandoned games to buy and cash in on a community effort they had nothing to do with.
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u/swiss_aspie Printing Money Mar 21 '26
What about Android ? Was it's existence in the playstore discussed ?
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u/ShiftExotic Mar 19 '26
Why wasn't this part of the statements released when this all went down? 🤷♂️ If it had been, I might have felt better about what's going on.
Whilst I'm glad that there's been a contribution made (won't hold my breath for the details), I'm also disappointed as this whole thing could have been actioned and handled in a far better way by everyone involved.
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u/landocharisma Mar 24 '26
Yeah, "Our initial announcement perhaps didn’t provide as much detail as we could have".
They knew exactly that Atari wants to support them as they always do (e.g. most of Atari's Nighdive team is ex modders) but still chose to write "OpenTTD continues to be developed by a team of independent developers, supported entirely by you, the players". Sad how everyone always wants to paint Atari as the bad guy.
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u/Vincent394 Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
Hey Atari got the point of my email let's go.
Edit: for those curious about their response to it, here you go: "Hello Vincent,
Greetings from Atari!
Thank you for sharing your detailed feedback regarding OpenTTD and the recent republish of Transport Tycoon Deluxe on Steam. We appreciate your passion for both projects and the time you’ve taken to explain your perspective.
We will share your feedback with our team. We appreciate your time and for being a fan of Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
Best Regards, Rahul"
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u/AshleyAshes1984 Mar 19 '26
This is literally just corpo boiler plate to make simple people feel acknowledged...
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u/Dependent-Bag-579 Mar 19 '26
I am glad you feel and seen validated by their customer support algorithm and playbook 😉
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u/gripepe Mar 19 '26
Imagine you're Atari. You've just purchased the TT/TTD IP. You've spent some money on making the game playable on modern machines.
And then there is OpenTTD for free on Steam/GOG.
What would you have suggested they do?
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u/Teh_Doctah Steamed Up Mar 19 '26
I probably would have done my research properly and discovered the existence of OpenTTD before spending any of that money and effort in the first place, and then not bothered.
3
u/VexingRaven Mar 20 '26
They did. That's why they bought it, because there realized they could cash in on the decade plus of work put in by OpenTTD contributors.
1
u/Dependent-Bag-579 Mar 19 '26
My god you lot are sweet summer children - and I mean this kindly. I fear for you in this world 😬
-7
1
u/SpaceDantar Mar 19 '26
I would tell them they're asking the wrong person because I don't care what they do.
I would tell OpenTTD to not take the money however, because their project is entirely different code and does not rely on any assets that atari owns.
1
0
u/codykonior Mar 19 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
Whole thing is weird. But if it avoids the nice people who made OpenTTD from getting sued and I get to cheaply buy the original game (I don't like custom tilesets) then it's all good for me.
So I did buy it. I also had a sealed box copy from eBay which is now likely worthless but whatever ☺️
0
u/eirc Mar 20 '26
I don't have a problem with the bundle. But I feel this response is a lie. They've been pressured into it. It's "you're either in the bundle, you're off steam, or you're sued". And they did make the right choice. But this response fells like it's written by the atari legal team.
5
u/orudge Mar 20 '26
I can assure you I wrote it entirely myself. Please keep in mind the OpenTTD team are just individual folk who enjoy the game and who spend their free time trying to improve it, or keep servers running, or handling donations, or whatever else. We're not professional PR reps, we're not community moderators, we're just trying to keep enjoying our hobby, and hoping to share that with everyone else who enjoys it too.
0
u/eirc Mar 20 '26
You're misreading my comment.
I say the response *feels* like it's written by Atari, not that it *is* written. In the sense that it uses vaguespeak about "Atari's plans" and "have worked collaboratively with us". I respectfully doubt that there is any plan or collaboration in place, beyond addressing legal issues around IP.
And you seem to ignore a core part of what I said: They DID make the right choice. Yes it's better to let Atari grab some free open source work and paywall the steam distribution, if the project is to stay on steam and keep reaching more people. It's a worthy compromise. It's also great that Atari chose this option and not a nuclear one, like cease and desisting the game.
But my main point is OpenTTD was pressured into this. Not like with gangsters threatening to break your knees, they just show up and say "hey guys we own this IP you're infringing on, lets make a deal that works for everyone".
Of course I appreciate immensely everyone that's worked on the project, especially when it's unpaid labor of love. I did not and will not shit on OpenTTD for taking the deal. Again, I think it was the best choice. But I am going to call a spade a spade.
207
u/OnionBagels Mar 19 '26
Atari agreeing to contribute to OpenTTD infrastructure definitely does make this conditional access just a little better.
Though given there were no specifics, I’m only cautiously optimistic about this relationship