[HN Gopher] An update on Steam / GOG changes for OpenTTD
___________________________________________________________________
An update on Steam / GOG changes for OpenTTD
Author : jandeboevrie
Score : 242 points
Date : 2026-03-19 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openttd.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openttd.org)
| beardsciences wrote:
| I'm glad that Atari was willing to compromise at all. I'm happy
| with the updated response, and hope that it helps others
| understand the nuance of the situation. Anyone can still go
| download the main release from the official site.
| paxys wrote:
| How are people supposed to understand the "nuance of the
| situation" when they aren't even sharing it? What is the
| problem to begin with? Why can't both projects continue to
| exist independently?
| striking wrote:
| The bundling might feel necessary from Atari's side because
| OpenTTD would compete with Atari's re-release on platforms
| like Steam and GoG (unlike on OpenTTD's website, where you're
| already at the end of the funnel for OpenTTD specifically and
| therefore Atari doesn't feel like they're losing a sale).
| nemomarx wrote:
| OpenTTD started from the ip they now own, and it's possible
| Atari could try and prove that in court. I don't know if they
| would win, but why spend the legal fees here?
| benoau wrote:
| The problem is copyright won't expire on the 1995 game until
| some time next century, while a French company that acquired
| Atari's name and copyrights 20 years ago is now asserting
| their exclusive rights over the IP.
| limagnolia wrote:
| Does OpenTTD contain any Atari IP? I thought it was
| completely re-written, and did not include any of the
| original game assets?
| RGamma wrote:
| Until the IP is flipped to another owner and the final squeeze
| begins. Gotta mirror this.
| Lammy wrote:
| > a compromise would be needed to balance Atari's commercial
| interests (which of course they are entitled to pursue as the
| rights holder)
|
| No, fuck 'em. They had nothing to do with developing the game,
| and in a sane copyright structure a thirty-year-old work would be
| public domain by now.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well, they shouldn't be entitled but they _are_ entitled.
| blizdiddy wrote:
| Agreed. Publishers need to be knocked off this absurd moral
| high ground. If merely being rich is enough for me to profit
| off of Miles Davis songs for decades after his death, copyright
| is just another wealth redistribution to the rich. Steal all
| the games and music, and any ghoul that claims I'm stifling
| creativity can compare their compositions to mine.
| maybewhenthesun wrote:
| > in a sane copyright structure
|
| You are not wrong. But alas we don't have that. ANd in the
| reality we live in this collaboration is way better than the
| alternative.
| blizdiddy wrote:
| We know what the law is... the law is bullshit.
|
| Is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of
| capitalism?
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| What you can imagine has very little to bear on what they
| can get away with without being legally shut down.
| passivegains wrote:
| I mean, yeah. There's enough nukes locked and loaded around
| the globe to end human civilization as we know it in
| minutes. Nobody's made a bomb that can fix socioeconomics.
| maybewhenthesun wrote:
| No. Or maybe yes (with the current US government the end of
| the world is quite easy to imagine... )
|
| But what I can imagine has very little to do with what
| actually happens.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > They had nothing to do with developing the game
|
| OpenTTD started as an effort to translate the original game's
| assembly into higher level code.
|
| It was not a clean room implementation. The original code was
| used as a base.
| Lammy wrote:
| Who gives a shit? It's from 1995 and nu-Atari had nothing to
| do with it.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Copyright from 1995 has not expired.
| Lammy wrote:
| And now we have looped back around to my original
| comment. I'll give you a moment to scroll up and read it
| again.
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| But it's not and we don't live in fantasy land. Your approach
| would have it shut down tomorrow.
| paxys wrote:
| I'm sure I'm missing some context but what is Atari's role here
| exactly? Isn't OpenTTD an independent and fully legal project?
| What is Atari's basis for asking for a "compromise"?
|
| Or is it just the case that the project maintainers got paid off?
| Closi wrote:
| Atari own all the IP and copyright.
|
| While OpenTTD is open source, it's basis is really that the
| original game was reverse-engineered, originally using the
| original assets, and then rebuilt.
|
| Also all the map data etc is owned by Atari, so you need to
| have a 'genuine' copy to access all the levels etc.
| paxys wrote:
| What copyright? OpenTTD doesn't copy any code or assets from
| the original game. It is a ground-up rewrite. There is no
| copyright violation.
| sylos wrote:
| I read somewhere that it's not a clean room rewrite but
| rather it started off as a reverse engineering.
| designerarvid wrote:
| Reproducing someone's intellectual property and publishing
| it is exactly what constitutes a copyright violation.
|
| You can retype someone's book with your keyboard, it's
| still not yours.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Reproducing the surface behavior of a program, no matter
| how faithfully, is not in itself copyright violation if
| it's a cleanroom implementation. But int this case it's
| not to write the new one, the developers studied (and
| manually translated to C++) the original code, not just
| the program's behavior. So this is more of a case of a
| derived work, like a translation of a novel.
| orphea wrote:
| Reproducing is absolutely not a copyright violation.
| Otherwise emulators would have no legal option to exist.
| designerarvid wrote:
| That is a question about which copyrights are enforced.
| Different question.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| An emulator is not a reproduction of the thing it
| emulates.
| anthk wrote:
| Learn something new, dear GenZers:
|
| https://osgameclones.com/
|
| Maybe you all realize how much brainwashed from
| corporations yall actually are.
| iso1631 wrote:
| Look and Feel in computers and how it interacts with
| copyright is hardly something new
|
| https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v03/03Har
| vJL...
| anthk wrote:
| And Sony vs Bleem (or the IBM BIOS reimplementation)
| already set a precedent so that doesn't really matter
| anymore. Look at Wine. Or Exegutor. Or DOSBox.
|
| All of them totally legal reimplementing either prior
| look and feel and functionality.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > The code of computer programs are excluded from design
| protection, but visual aspects of software are very
| commonly protectable as long as they are 'new' (i.e. not
| a direct copy of anything that has come before) and
| possess 'individual character' (i.e. that the design
| produces a different 'overall impression' than anything
| that has come before)
|
| I'm no expect, but Chris Sawyer style games certainly
| provided a unique overall impression to me. Whether it
| needs to be a registered design or not I couldn't say,
| but it's not going to be cheap to find out.
|
| More recent battles have relied on Trademark and Patent
| law rather than Copyright, but "Look and Feel" is still a
| legal grey area
| designerarvid wrote:
| GenZ?
| jorl17 wrote:
| Note that, while it is a rewrite, it was done so through
| disassembling the original game, not via a clean room
| implementation. I find this particularly relevant given
| that the original was written (mostly) in assembly too.
| Closi wrote:
| Also even if it is a ground up rewrite, the look and feel
| still matters.
|
| Try creating a 1:1 dupe of a Hermes bag or a Rolex and
| see how their legal team reacts (even if you call it an
| OpenBirk)
| anthk wrote:
| [flagged]
| bjt wrote:
| The fact that these exist does not mean that they're
| immune from legal challenge. If the original creators
| wanted to sue, there are all kinds of claims that would
| have a decent shot in court (e.g. trademark, trade dress,
| design patents) besides "you copied our copyrighted
| source code." The clones exist more because people are
| being cool about it, and because there's not a strong
| economic incentive to challenge them. Those things can
| change at any time.
| anthk wrote:
| Sony vs Bleem. They already lost this case in court.
| comex wrote:
| That was a very different case.
|
| Out of the two claims, the only one that made it to
| appeals court was about whether it was fair use for Bleem
| to use screenshots of PS1 games to advertise its emulator
| (which was compatible with those games). The Ninth
| Circuit decided it was. But that's not relevant here.
|
| The other claim was more relevant, as it was an unfair
| competition claim that apparently had something to do
| with Bleem's reimplementation of the PS1 BIOS. But the
| district court's record of the case doesn't seem to be
| available online, and the information I was able to find
| online was vague, so I don't know what exactly the facts
| or legal arguments were on that claim. Without an appeal
| it also doesn't set precedent.
|
| If there were a lawsuit over OpenTTD, it would probably
| be for copyright infringement rather than unfair
| competition, and it would probably focus more on fair use
| and copyrightability. For fair use, it matters how much
| something is functional versus creative. The PS1 BIOS is
| relatively functional, but a game design and
| implementation are highly creative. On the other hand,
| despite being creative, game mechanics by themselves are
| not copyrightable. So it might come down to the extent to
| which OpenTTD's code was based on the reverse-engineered
| original code, as opposed to being a truly from-scratch
| reimplementation of the same mechanics. Visual appearance
| would also be relevant. Oracle v. Google would be an
| important precedent.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| I think I'm even older than you, because I remember what
| Nintendo did to the Great Giana Sisters.
| haunter wrote:
| Good luck making an open source Pokemon game clone and
| see how it goes
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. You can
| make your substantive points without that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| anthk wrote:
| - OpenArena
|
| - Chip's Challange and custom levels pack
|
| - Freedoom+Blasmepher for Doom/Heretic
|
| - LibreQuake
|
| - Supertux2
|
| - Oolite
|
| - Kgoldminner/XScavenger with level sets
|
| - Frozen Bubble
|
| - Any X11/console/9front sokoban clone. Everyone reuses
| the same level set over and over.
| 20k wrote:
| Clean room reimplementations of software projects have
| been tested in court and are legally fine
| not_the_fda wrote:
| Its not a clean ground-up rewrite. They dis-assembled the
| original binaries into assembly and started from there.
| Macha wrote:
| There's two issues:
|
| 1. OpenTTD is not a clean room rewrite. It started by
| disassembling the original game and manually converting to
| C++ on a piecemeal basis.
|
| 2. As the game was updated, sure lots of this code has been
| rewritten. Almost certainly the majority. But has all of it
| been legally rewritten? Ehh... much less clear.
|
| This sort of process has generally been held to produce a
| derived work of whatever you're cloning, even if the final
| result no longer contains original code, hence why clean
| room reverse engineering even became a thing in the first
| place.
|
| It's probably fuzzy enough at this stage that you could
| have a long expensive drawn out legal battle about it (and
| I suspect we'll see at least one for some other project in
| the coming years with the recent trend of "I had AI rewrite
| this GPL project to my MIT licensed clone"). Would OpenTTD
| win? Who knows. Could OpenTTD afford it? Certainly not.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't BSD in a similar legal
| limbo for a while? In that case wouldn't there be
| precedent for such projects to be legally fine so long as
| they've existed long enough and been heavily modified?
| Ekaros wrote:
| It might be improved and changed in many ways. But I have
| zero doubt it would not lose in court any argument over
| copyrights. Most reasonable people would tell that it looks
| way too close to original. And that would probably be
| enough.
| iso1631 wrote:
| If I were to create a new game from the ground up, with new
| artistic assets, and not an LLM in sight, with the
| characters of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader playing around
| on the Millenium Falcon, I would be breaching copyright.
|
| I'm not sure if look and feel of a game like Transport
| Tycoon can be copyrighted, but I wouldn't like to be
| against it.
|
| (I remember buying Transport Tycoon from I think Beatles,
| in Altrincham. I clearly remember riding on the front seat
| of the bus upstairs on my way to Flixton back in 1994
| reading the manual)
| ikiris wrote:
| It seems you don't understand copyright. The entire game is
| copyrighted. Not just the specific sprites.
|
| You can see the same effect if someone were to make a
| yellow short guy with metal claws and regeneration as a
| character.
| lstodd wrote:
| What levels? TTD, Open or no has no levels, only a map
| generator, and you seriously don't want to try the
| reimplementation of the original one.
| LoganDark wrote:
| Atari probably threatened to take it down if there wouldn't be
| a compromise. So a compromise was worked out that wouldn't
| require a takedown.
| lstodd wrote:
| Pretty much this. No one was interested in playing corporate
| games, and Steam/GoG isn't that important anyway.
| legitster wrote:
| These are not people ripping off TTD to make a buck. If you
| absolutely love the game so much that you spent 20 years
| modding it, you're going to have some respect for the original
| and the publisher and are probably glad they are interested
| again.
|
| I get that it's not the same Atari as it was 30 years ago. But
| I liken it to you being a Beatles cover band and the estate of
| John Lennon reaches out to you, you're going to treat them with
| some sort of respect.
| kabdib wrote:
| I really wonder who "Atari" is these days . . .
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Currently (and for the past 25 odd years) it's a brand owned
| by a French holding company called Atari SA, formely known as
| Infogrames.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| While Atari holds the rights to Transport Tycoon, I'd argue
| that at this point taking OpenTTD down would be a huge footgun;
| like Nintendo with emulators, they can also buy / license the
| engine and re-release the game on modern platforms under its
| official name.
| CivBase wrote:
| > 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.
|
| > we understood that a compromise would be needed to balance
| Atari's commercial interests [...] against the availability of a
| free, well-developed evolution of the game.
|
| Sounds to me like you were pressured by Atari to make these
| changes.
| calibas wrote:
| Everyone's being diplomatic, including most of the HN comments.
|
| This seems to be the simplest compromise, and allows OpenTTD to
| continue existing without too many problems from Atari, so
| people don't want to make waves.
| NietTim wrote:
| There is no way not to, OpenTTD has 0 cards to play since
| everything is explicitly build on IP that is not theirs, and
| they know it. They were "not pressured" because Atari didn't
| utter threats to them, it didn't need to come to that because
| the OpenTTD people were reasonable, and so was Atari.
|
| Not sure why so many commenters are failing to grasp this.
| junaru wrote:
| Atari is releasing an inferior product and needs the superior
| community one delisted. The remaster cannot compete, simple as.
| ethanrutherford wrote:
| it is neither being delisted, nor was it requested to be. As
| far as rights holders exercising their rights, this is about
| the most collaborative way it could have gone. Not every rights
| holder is a John Carmack.
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| This guy ended his thought with "simple as". He's not a smart
| man.
| mhitza wrote:
| The initial post has omitted any reason for the change. Of course
| people would speculate, including in the HN comments.
|
| What seemed majority at the time was the idea of some
| collaboration/partnership and monetary exchange.
|
| I think its a good lesson in communication, especially when you
| have a dedicated community. Transparency is welcome.
|
| Regarding Atari and "their rights", there hasn't been an Atari
| for way too long and the IP was passed between companies left and
| right without additive value to users. I expect transport tycoon
| to be another cash grab, but happy to be surprised for the
| better.
| maybewhenthesun wrote:
| Atari being the commercial firm it is, I could very well
| imagine that stuff was under NDA. Just 'by default', because
| that's what the lawyers like. And only when angry speculations
| emerged they could be persuaded to just openly communicate.
|
| Or the OpenTTD guys were not the best communicators.
| Considering it's the OpenTTD creators live at the intersection
| of the groups 'programmers' and 'adults who like to play with
| train sets' it wouldn't be a stretch.
|
| All in all I think this collaborative approach is very much the
| preferred outcome.
|
| All those people saying 'the open web is dead' and 'people
| don't download from websites anymore' are exaggerating imo.
| legitster wrote:
| As a sidenote, this whole situation implies just how important
| platforms are.
|
| Nothing about OpenTTD has changed. You can literally just go
| download it off their website for free - same as it was 20 years
| ago. And you can add it to your Steam library just fine. It's
| only been on the Steam store for 5 of those years.
|
| But the open internet is dead now and just being "de-
| merchandised" from a platform feels like being relegated to the
| dark web (maybe something the open source community doesn't quite
| fully appreciate).
| lstodd wrote:
| Open internet is dead only to those that don't take the effort
| to discover. Otherwise it's still as open as it always was.
|
| Since there was an internet to speak of, there always were and
| still are vast amounts of people unaware of stuff that exists,
| limited by no "platforms" but only by their own lack of desire.
| throwaway0q5347 wrote:
| > limited by no "platforms" but only by their own lack of
| desire.
|
| Or Google's low ranking of their content
| lstodd wrote:
| I don't even.
|
| Relying on third-party ranking of whatever is a clear
| indicator of lack of effort.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| Short of developing psychic abilities, how would you then
| address the discoverability problem without relying on a
| third party?
|
| Forums, search engines, social media, and link
| aggregators are all third parties with their own ranking.
| Nobody outside of a handful of small-web hobbyists have
| put a "cool links" section into a website since 1997.
| skydhash wrote:
| There's always a relationship aspect in discoverability.
| Unless the set is small, there will always be
| intermediary nodes in that graph that will connect
| consumers and producers. But there's no need for it to be
| a mega tech company. Radio DJs help with discovering
| musics. Books club can help with recommending books.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Doesn't need to be, but most traffic is driven by search.
| I reckon 2nd most common is influencers, and I don't know
| if that's an upgrade (even easier to buy out).
| BowBun wrote:
| This is classic engineering missing the forest for the
| trees.
|
| The answer to your question is: same as we always did
| before! Do you talk to friends? Colleagues? Family? You
| definitely chat with us here on HN. All of these people
| share things with you constantly.
|
| There's a funny obsession in tech circles to gather all
| the information they can as quick as possible. I much
| prefer to optimize for the quality of information I'm
| ingesting.
| repeekad wrote:
| Technology Connections referred to this as "algorithmic
| complacency", young people don't like Bluesky because they
| have to decide for themselves what content to follow instead
| of a default algorithm feed
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| I use a similar argument to those who say that gaming is
| dead. Sure, if you're waiting for $AAA_DEVELOPER to change,
| it's probably dead, but you don't even have to look that far
| to find amazing games everywhere in indie and AA.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Gaming feels dead to devs these days. But I know that's not
| what gamers care about.
| polothesecond wrote:
| Sadly indie developers are only just starting get into my
| preferred genre. I am excited to see how a number of
| upcoming titles turn out, but for the time I'm stuck
| waiting for $AAA_DEVELOPER to change.
|
| I've had half the mind to just try my own hand at game dev
| again.
| dryarzeg wrote:
| That is true to some extent. However, let me ask you one
| simple question: how would you try to search for something if
| you are not aware of it's existence? In other words, how
| people that are not aware of existence of open-source
| projects (such as OpenTTD) are supposed to discover them if
| they're not searching for them on purpose (which is
| impossible given that they have no clue about their
| existence)?
|
| Of course there will be some ways like social media or
| something else. But that question is what seems to worry many
| people in our case, in my humble opinion. Remember that most
| of the planet's population is not even aware of existence of
| open-source projects and open-source concept itself. So how
| are they supposed to discover it if they don't know about it?
| When it's present on platforms like Steam and GOG, it helps
| to spread the word, but when it's not... Well, I guess that
| seems to be a problem for some people.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > In other words, how people that are not aware of
| existence of open-source projects (such as OpenTTD) are
| supposed to discover them if they're not searching for them
| on purpose (which is impossible given that they have no
| clue about their existence)?
|
| This question tickles me. In the before time, something
| would be so good you were compelled to tell someone about
| it.
|
| Sriracha, Costco are brands you likely know that dont
| advertise, and somehow got popular. In the 90's there were
| bands that were massively popular with little to no air
| play, and less promotion (Fugazi is a great example).
| starkparker wrote:
| probably a little telling that you don't seem to know the
| name of the sriracha brand you're referring to that does
| zero-dollar advertising
| whstl wrote:
| Does it matter? People just look for the bottle with a
| rooster anyway.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Ahh the old days before Huy Fong lost the plot.
|
| My introduction to their Sriracha was in 1994, when the
| Puerto Rican cook at the Italian restaurant I worked at
| sent me to Stop and Shop for the "rooster".
|
| Till hosing their relationship with Underwood Ranch
| (their sole provider of chili's) this was the only
| product in the marketplace (much like ketchup was always
| Heinz for a time). Absolute market dominance wrecked over
| not honoring your handshake deal with your ONLY supplier.
|
| The latest batches by them are green, and no one wants
| them. The underwood version of the product is taking over
| --- it has a giant dragon on the bottle now, and what I
| look for now rather than the rooster.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Sriracha, Costco are brands you likely know that dont
| advertise
|
| This was a Costco ad
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i5CQVfmx-0
| nimih wrote:
| > So how are they supposed to discover it if they don't
| know about it?
|
| Presumably, through social interaction with others in the
| communities they are a part of. That's how I heard about
| OpenTTD in the early 00s, at least.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Right. This is a chicken-egg problem. We also need a
| replacement for google search; Google ruined it, on
| purpose. We are being made blind (not totally blind, but
| dumber, and then blind).
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > how would you try to search for something if you are not
| aware of it's existence?
|
| How are most games on steam found? I kinda doubt all people
| find them through steam own mechanisms. I even doubt the
| majority find them this way. Gaming has multiple sources of
| information, be it news, social media, influencers or
| cooperations. Video-content is probably the biggest source
| of being discovered for most games these days.
| ux266478 wrote:
| > how would you try to search for something if you are not
| aware of it's existence?
|
| You're asking a leading question. The verb you're using
| here is one specifically indicating interaction with a
| "platform" (a digital aggregation of information). The
| answer is you don't search anything, you completely change
| your epistemic and interaction model. Instead you build a
| social web of people who have their own social webs, and
| you share things you've made and things that have been
| shared with you. This is your "platform".
| Asooka wrote:
| By googling "best open source games" and finding blogs and
| forums that talk about them. In fact googling that exact
| phrase returns as its first search result a Reddit thread
| in which OpenTTD is one of the first games listed.
|
| It's not like you can discover it on Steam any easier.
|
| Of course, searching for information itself is also a
| skill, but it is a truly essential one for the modern
| world.
| itsdesmond wrote:
| This is as good an argument as saying that Americans with
| unhealthy diets bear sole responsibility, ignoring the
| massive corporate efforts to convince them of the
| healthfulness of highly processed foods. While, obviously,
| individuals have ultimate responsibility for their actions,
| ignoring the concerted efforts to influence those actions
| through psychology, marketing/ads, paid "experts", paid
| influencers and celebrities, lobbies, blah blah et cetera.
|
| When I started using the internet, if I asked someone what
| the internet was I was unlikely to get any answer at all. It
| was new. I had to define it for myself. Ask a 6 year old what
| the internet is. It's YouTube. TikTok. Roblox. Experiences
| that are designed to keep them there. It is obviously more
| difficult for an individual to engage with the open web than
| it ever has been (for those with access at all).
| skydhash wrote:
| > It is obviously more difficult for an individual to
| engage with the open web than it ever has been (for those
| with access at all).
|
| It's very easy. If you're a producer, you maintain a
| separate presence outside the walled platforms. If you're a
| consumer, you look outside the walled platform for content.
| itsdesmond wrote:
| Hey maybe I'm wrong, overthinking it. Maybe the problem
| is that simple. Maybe you can only see things simply.
| There's simply no way to tell.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >It's very easy. If you're a producer, you maintain a
| separate presence outside the walled platforms.
|
| I want to try one day. Steam's pricing parity adds
| friction to that, though. I can't reward people for
| venturing to a place where they own their software, and
| that seems to be the only real way to move many.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >ignoring the concerted efforts to influence those actions
|
| Ignorance isn't the point. The issue is that it's your
| responsibility to stop them. the buck always stops at "I".
| Are they just going to stop themselves? Is your neighbor
| going to stop them for you? If so, why should she if you
| don't?
|
| As Kant said, enlightenment is getting out of your self
| inflicted tutelage. When is it self inflicted? When you
| have the reason but lack the courage to act without
| direction from someone else.
|
| Yes, there's influencers and lobbies but the solutions are
| still one search away. Even Google doesn't hide the
| alternatives from you. And sure we can force feed every
| American veggies and force install linux on their computers
| but that'd defeat the point.
| jl6 wrote:
| The open internet is a whisper in a screaming crowd. Yes,
| it's technically still there.
| iso1631 wrote:
| I don't remember how I first heard about slashdot, but I _know_
| I discovered debian and enlightenment through it, and I would
| assume I discovered openttd through it.
|
| Perhaps some comment on a forum or usenet somwhere. Or perhaps
| on a compuserve group. Or maybe someone else at school.
| imp0cat wrote:
| And what did you discover on hn? Let me show you
| https://www.oldunreal.com/ ;)
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| That's why we need to reel in these platforms. The mobile ones
| are slowly starting to relent, but that's only the beginning.
| bigyabai wrote:
| The mobile ones only have one storefront. PC games
| distribution is a healthy and competitive market.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > You can literally just go download it off their website for
| free
|
| That's cumbersome. The main benefit of platforms is comfort.
| Steam takes care of installation and updating, while often also
| offers some access with the community. Open internet has more
| choice and liberty, but for the price of more work and
| annoyance.
|
| That the main reason why all big platforms succeed and the
| small platforms fail. Comfort is just too valuable.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This is beyond reasonable.
|
| You can still download it for free outside of Steam.
|
| If I make a Sonic fan game and Sega is like, you can keep it
| online, but just not on Steam, that's nice.
|
| In this situation you still have the option of playing it on
| Steam for a modest price
|
| The alternative is the Nintendo route...
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| _One_ alternative is the Nintendo route. Another is the
| Hololive route, wherein they started a publishing brand for
| indie fangames which they actively support and promote on an
| official Steam store page. Another example being Touhou, a one-
| man indie franchise with permissive commercial derivative works
| licensing, which has become a cultural phenomenon in Japan and
| to a lesser extent overseas thanks to an absolutely vibrant
| community that has made millions of fan illustrations, tens of
| thousands of albums, and thousands of fangames, hundreds of
| which are sold on Steam.
|
| If megacorps would stop being stuck up their own ass and
| completely irrational about how they exercise their IP rights,
| they would actually be able to benefit massively from allowing
| their fan communities to flourish. The status quo doesn't have
| to be this shitty, and we don't necessarily need to give credit
| to companies who meet the incredibly low bar of "not Nintendo".
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Steam is not the only way to play games.
|
| Atari is very kind to say you can keep distributing a fan
| game, just not on a commercial storefront.
|
| I don't expect to see Sonic Fan games on Steam anytime soon.
| Even though Sega is one of the best publishers in this
| regard.
|
| Now if OpenTDD said no , we're leaving it on Steam for free
| ,Atari could probably contact Valve to get it delisted.
|
| A compromise is not a loss. I've downloaded tons of
| applications and games without Steam holding my hand and
| somehow I'm ok. Although I do wish sandboxing solutions with
| better gpu support existed
| eykanal wrote:
| Fully agree, and glad you posted this. Atari has no
| responsibility to the open source community, and indeed has
| every reason to push back against this effort. That they're
| willing to discuss things at all, and that they agree to help
| support the effort, is frankly astonishing and extremely kind-
| hearted.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| "no responsibility" but they could have chosen not to
| intentionally hurt them
| ndiddy wrote:
| Imagine if you were Atari. You've bought the rights to
| Transport Tycoon Deluxe from Chris Sawyer and want to sell
| the game up on Steam. Then you see OpenTTD (the exact same
| game except better in every way) also on Steam for free.
| What do you do?
| jmholla wrote:
| You do your due diligence beforehand and realize this is
| a bad use of your money.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| In the first place, the game is 30 years old. If the
| world had a sane copyright regime, it would already be in
| the public domain. Nobody should be particularly entitled
| to buying abandoned 30-year-old IPs and squatting on them
| to collect rent. All the more so when there would be no
| rent to collect if not for the derivative work being
| literally the only thing keeping the IP alive.
|
| But let's suppose I am Atari and I have for some reason
| proceeded with buying said abandonware without doing my
| research. Upon discovering OpenTTD, I would hire the guy
| behind OpenTTD to work on a commercial version, keeping
| OpenTTD free to play but perhaps with some cool monetized
| expansion pack that would not have been possible without
| giving the developer the funding they need to work on it.
| That way I am making an investment in actually adding
| value to the game, and rewarding the person who kept it
| alive and in turn earning community goodwill, instead of
| investing in a shortsighted attempt to collect rent that
| backfires massively.
| freehorse wrote:
| > hire the guy behind OpenTTD
|
| > commercial version
|
| > monetized expansion
|
| It is not clear to me whether turning (future evolutions
| of) OpenTTD commercial and monetising it is a preferable
| scenario for its community.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| I think it could be beneficial for players, if having a
| passionate developer able to spend more time working on
| it allows them to make future evolutions significantly
| better than they could be in a world where the developer
| only has time to work on it passively. That said, I am
| generally a proponent of indie game developers being paid
| for their work, as an indie game developer myself, so my
| personal bias may certainly leaking be leaking into my
| evaluation :)
|
| I'd note it also doesn't need to be done in a way that
| deprives players of any free future evolution. Paradox
| has a nice model for their games where they release
| expansion packs, where about half the content is part of
| a free update to the base game and half the content is
| paid. That would be perfectly suited for a case like
| this.
| moggers123 wrote:
| I go "oops I probably should have realised that existed
| before I decided to purchase the rights to and re-release
| a 999999 year old game which already has a GPL
| clone/spiritual successor/something".
|
| I then go "well why re-release this ancient game running
| in an emulator, when this exists?" and ask the core team
| of OpenTTD if they want to monetize their steam/GOG
| releases now that I can licence out the TTD IP to them
| and remove any remaining legal ambiguity (and recoup my
| """investment""" via revenue sharing).
|
| And if they don't I take it as a learning experience (to
| do my homework before I buy IPs) and release my TTD-in-
| an-emulator on steam and GOG knowing full well that its
| probably not going to generate many sales. Maybe I add
| "hey just so you know there's this really cool modern
| source port you can get for free..." to the description
| and hope that I can generate some sales off of good boy
| points.
| rablackburn wrote:
| Seems like a pretty clear case of caveat emptor
| 20k wrote:
| At the same time, the open source community has absolutely no
| responsibility to make Atari profits here either. The outcome
| here is simply that open source is getting screwed over
|
| It isn't kind hearted. Them trying to shut down openttd would
| lead to a gigantic clusterfuck that would hurt their sales.
| This is them trying to remove a direct competitor to them
| releasing a new game as much as possible, without generating
| community backlash - to maximise profits
|
| These companies are not our friends
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| And yet, they're also directly supporting the developers of
| OpenTTD via a donation and not giving them any legal
| harassment.
|
| This is, at worst, a morally-neutral compromise that's far
| better than any worst-case scenario
| freehorse wrote:
| > open source is getting screwed over
|
| It may have been "screwed over" if there was no access to
| the oss game. But you can still download the game from
| their website. They just do not want that these appear as
| competitors in steam/gog platforms, so they bundled the oss
| version. Both sides thought this was a reasonable
| resolution. Thus I don't see "screwing over" here.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| The Dwarf Fortress route.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >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.
|
| That's pretty cool of them.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Without knowing the rev share it could be exploitative. If
| OpenTDD is being sold commercially Atari shouldn't be taking
| all the money from all the hard work that people have put into
| the project over the years.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| It's clearly exploitative
| Lammy wrote:
| Agreed. Effectively-nobody would be interested in buying it
| if it weren't for OpenTTD and all the improvements they've
| made over the years.
|
| It's absurd that some company can buy up and profit from
| thirty-year-old formerly-abandonware, and that society have
| been collectively browbeaten into believing in the notion
| of """intellectual property""" at all.
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| Thing is, they own it. They have every right to cease and
| desist, I assume, and haven't. That's generous compared to
| most companies reactions already.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Thing is, they own it.
|
| No, they don't. They own the game data, and the original
| game engine. They don't own the reimplemented Open Source
| game engine.
|
| OpenTTD did not _have_ to do anything here. It sounds like
| they had a very positive interaction with Atari, in which
| Atari is providing them with some support and
| collaboration, and in exchange for that, OpenTTD agreed to
| formalize the requirement for "you need to own the
| original game data" by having people on game stores
| purchase the original game through them before getting
| OpenTTD through them.
|
| That seems like a pretty reasonable approach. It should be
| held up as a good model for collaboration. But it shouldn't
| be treated as "they have every right to [demand a] cease
| and desist".
| WarcrimeActual wrote:
| They do own it. Any court would likely agree that what
| OpenTTD does is copy an IP they own. And they'd have the
| right to C&D it.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Reverse engineering for compatibility, and implementation
| of a _compatible_ system (as long as you don 't copy the
| original) are not just legal, they're _explicitly_
| legally protected in many jurisdictions. You 'll get in
| serious trouble if you copy the original, but there is
| specific case law supporting things like emulators. See,
| for instance, Sony v Connectix and Sega v Accolade.
| gmueckl wrote:
| But OpenTTD is explicitly a faithful copy of the
| original. It replicates the original product in
| appearance and behavior and is open about it. If you were
| to dig into source code history, mailing list archives,
| chat logs etc. I'm certain that you could find a lot of
| evidence to support this position.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| "Behavior" isn't copyrightable; it _explicitly_ isn 't,
| in fact.
|
| To what extent did they copy "appearance" other than
| supporting the use of the original assets?
|
| It is certainly possible that they didn't scrupulously
| maintain clean hands, but I wouldn't automatically assume
| that.
| einr wrote:
| GNU's Not Unix is explicitly a faithful copy of UNIX. It
| replicates the original product in appearance and
| behavior and is open about it.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's... complicated; they own Transport Tycoon Deluxe,
| its code, its assets and its IP.
|
| Back when OpenTTD first released, it was a decompile (?)
| of TTD that loaded the assets of the game itself. This
| was... legally dubious, since reverse engineering.
|
| But over time they Ship of Theseus'd the game - all code
| rewritten from assembly to C/C++ (I don't know), open
| source asset packs, etc. It's still the same base game,
| same feel, etc but nothing of the original code or assets
| remain.
|
| I don't know enough about IP law etc to judge whether
| Atari would have any leg to stand on in a court of law,
| but it would be Complicated to say the least.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Though it's no longer a clone, it literally was a clone
| when it first started (you were even supposed to supply
| your own totally legitimately acquired asset packs).
|
| So it'd be pretty much impossible to claim the engine
| came about as a clean room implementation. And of course,
| even if maybe they could win a court case (honestly don't
| think they could) the mere threat of one would likely
| make openttd quit.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > you were even supposed to supply your own totally
| legitimately acquired asset packs
|
| I don't have the impression that OpenTTD encouraged or
| sanctioned obtaining those assets illegitimately. They
| talked about how to extract them from the original game
| that you owned.
| maCDzP wrote:
| Now with AI I wonder if it's possible to just let agents build a
| perfect emulation of the game. It reminds me of fuzzers. You let
| the agent go loose on the game and it brute forces every possible
| state. Then recreates the code. It's very inefficient- but it
| probably works.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Why would you when an open source version already exists?
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| So https://malus.sh/
|
| Good luck with all that
| einr wrote:
| You're going to _brute force every possible state of a sandbox
| building game._ See you on the other side of the heat death of
| the universe; hope you stocked up on Claude Code credits.
| yellowapple wrote:
| In situations like this it's odd to me that the rightsholder
| wouldn't just sell an official build of the FOSS reimplementation
| with the assets (legally) included. If some of the proceeds end
| up going toward the FOSS reimplementation's donations then it
| seems like an easy win-win.
| sho_hn wrote:
| There are actually cases this has happened in (e.g. re-releases
| using ScummVM under the hood; id basing products on community
| source ports, etc.), but it's not always that simple.
|
| Chris Sawyer as creator for example is known to have particular
| opinions on this as I recall, and if you e.g. look over to film
| making there's also a hot debate over preserving original
| artistic intent and original creations over later remasters.
| OpenTTD is more than a maintenance upgrade, it's a continuation
| and a different game.
|
| Honestly I think it's probably just OK what Atari has done
| here. Monetizing the original assets is well in their rights
| both legally and morally (especially considering e.g.
| royalities to Chris), OpenTTD remains available everywhere,
| they're monetarily supporting OpenTTS, gamers will find it.
|
| Note that once a commercial company decides to ship a FOSS
| project, they also are much more invested in potentially
| controlling its direction to different ends. This setup keeps
| OpenTTD community-run and independent, free to make decisions
| independent of a commercial agenda. This also feels worth
| protecting.
| bombcar wrote:
| Another example is Heroes III with VCMI and HotA and other
| similar things. Some are attempts to do a bug-for-bug
| "vanilla" recreation, others expand on it in defined ways,
| still others add new features "in the spirit" of the
| original.
|
| When you get to the last, you can definitely see how the
| original creator/artists could disagree.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I don't have much to add except to say that I think this is a
| stand-out example of how companies and preservationists should
| work together and not against each other. The childish folks who
| are upset about this aren't familiar with the realties of either
| open source games perseveration nor the realities of being an IP
| holder. This is as close as we have gotten to the Good Place. I
| wish Atari luck on the re-release and I hope that anyone who's
| upset about it reflects on why they are upset.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| This is about as much as you can hope for tbh. More than a fair
| compromise.
|
| Society has become quite 'entitled' to 'free' things. As
| popular as they are, torrents and free streams and emulation
| and clones of games in an open source lib are all stealing
| something. I know thats an unpopular thing to say but it a
| fact.
|
| Now, those rights violations viewed in a larger context may
| change one's opinion on the whole, and I'm not jumping into
| that debate today.
|
| Atari did a cool thing. That's rare in the corporate world
| today. Give praise where it's deserved.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| Are they really stealing it though? They only brought the IP
| 30 years later they didnt make it or put any work towards it.
| The openTTD community has easily done 100x the work to extend
| the game.
| arvid-lind wrote:
| > ...all stealing something. I know thats an unpopular thing
| to say but it a fact.
|
| This is an unpopular opinion because it is not, in fact, a
| fact.
| jscd wrote:
| First, I agree it's cool that Atari, with all its ability to
| completely screw small projects over, didn't do that in this
| case.
|
| But, at the same time, I find it interesting that "emulations
| and clones" are considered entitlement (in a derogatory
| sense), but copyright protection is not. Before 1976 in the
| US, the _maximum_ copyright term was 56 years, and that would
| require filing for an extension from the default of _only 28
| years_.
|
| I think it's easy to forget that copyright as we know it is
| not set in stone. Historically, after 28 years, most works
| became public domain and that meant you could do literally
| whatever you want with it and it would not be legally
| stealing at all. I think we as a society have forgotten what
| it means to have a public domain.
| bigyabai wrote:
| > clones of games in an open source lib are all stealing
| something
|
| If you're going that far, aren't proprietary games and
| software "stealing" open source libs too? I think your
| definition is a bit wonky.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think it's interesting to look at your opinion (not you
| particularly, but everyone) and see if it would have been
| different if instead of "Atari" it was "Chris Sawyer".
|
| If it would have been, then there's probably an inconsistency
| somewhere.
| zem wrote:
| I don't think it's inconsistent to think that a person's
| right to their IP is worthy of respect but a faceless
| corporation's isn't. you can disagree, but it's not an
| inconsistency.
| bombcar wrote:
| It is somewhat, because you then have to say you respect
| their right to the IP, but don't respect their ability to
| sell said right.
|
| You can make that argument, but you need to actually _do_
| so and not just leave it unsaid.
| zem wrote:
| I think the difference in sentiment is between "I created
| this and I would like to continue deriving benefit from
| it" versus "we bought this and we would like it to retain
| its value". again this is not about the legal difference,
| just how people personally feel about it.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The distinction is that people respect people who make
| things they like. That's good, and noble: no matter what
| kind of topsy-turvy economic system you live under,
| making stuff is a valuable (not always the most valuable,
| but valuable nonetheless) skill, because people need and
| want stuff.
|
| People who merely buy stuff to extract rent from it are,
| at best, a necessary evil. There's nothing admirable in
| rentseeking behavior. It's just playing the game.
|
| If we're hanging around a campfire in the paleolithic,
| the guy who figured out how to make beer is going to be
| everyone's best friend. The guy who won't let anybody
| drink from the stream because it's "his" is liable to
| meet an unfortunate end.
| da_chicken wrote:
| Eh, Sawyer's career has left him a multi-millionaire, and
| Transport Tycoon is the foundation of that. If you've
| already made several lifetimes worth of income, I also
| don't really care about your IP rights anymore.
| zem wrote:
| i don't care so much about his IP rights (legal) as about
| the fact that this is his project (moral)
| jwitthuhn wrote:
| So they were not "pressured" but Atari contacted them and they
| proceeded to make this decision based because they "needed to
| balance Atari's commercial interests".
|
| That sound indistinguishable from being pressured.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Indeed. It sounds like they were further pressured to say they
| were not being pressured.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| The types of folks who make reimplemented game engines often
| do it as a labor of love towards the original. And the _best_
| companies often have great appreciation for their modding
| communities and preservationists. (Witness the good
| collaborations between some companies and SCUMMVM, for
| instance.) This may well have been a conversation that was
| entirely reasonable and respectful.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think they're saying Atari didn't threaten them but they both
| understood that they _could_ have. Honestly it sounds like
| Atari were trying to be nice. Like "you technically aren't
| allowed to do that, and we could just set our lawyers on you,
| but we'd like to not do that while also making money on our re-
| release".
|
| This seems like a perfectly reasonable compromise to me.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| How is "I haven't talked to my lawyer yet but you know I
| could" not a threat/pressure?
| NietTim wrote:
| There is no reason to assume they said that and all the
| reason to assume they didn't say that.
| IshKebab wrote:
| In the same way that "you kids aren't allowed to skate
| here, but maybe if you do it over _there_ I could just turn
| around and not notice you " isn't a threat.
| freehorse wrote:
| Reaching compromises with others is part of life. If the
| question is whether a copyright from 1995 should hold in this
| case, I would say no. But the world is sometimes not as we may
| want it to be. So taking that for granted, this seems like a
| very reasonable and mature resolution.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Would be nice to see OpenTTD on Steam/GOG, for a younger
| audience.
|
| Some games have a good replayfactor. Transport Tycoon Deluxe was
| nice in this regard; the spirit should be retained so younger
| folks can play it.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Seems reasonable to me. Back when I started playing OpenTTD,
| about 20 years ago, you had to provide your own data files from
| your ostensibly legal copy of TTD. They changed that after they
| started distributing free alternative graphics, but to be frank
| the _strict_ legal status of both OpenTTD and OpenRCT2 has always
| seemed mildly dubious to me, on account of both projects being
| based off disassembled code. Atari is being fairly reasonable and
| gentlemenly about this.
| NietTim wrote:
| I am very happy that this long stand grey area licensing
| situation around something I enjoy deeply has been resolved in
| what seems like the most perfect way possible
| c12 wrote:
| In a world full of Nintendos, be Atari.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| > please be nice to Atari
|
| You're not my mom...
| 1313ed01 wrote:
| After installing TTD from GOG I panicked a bit, not seeing any
| DOSBox or DOS files. For a moment I thought it was files from an
| old Windows 95 version only, but there was (also) a DOS installer
| (INSTALL.EXE). I ran that, went through all the usual steps
| (select Sound Blaster IRQs and so on) and now I can run it from
| my virtual (git-managed) DOS disk install directory where I
| install all my DOS games and applications. Next to the original
| TT that I installed a few months ago from an old CD-ROM. For
| completeness.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related. Others?
|
| _Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381746 - March 2026 (131
| comments)
| halo wrote:
| Wonder if the reaction would be the same if Wine was conditional
| on buying a license to Windows.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| Well IF Microsoft would also collaborate with Wine...
|
| I think I'd pay for a Windows License if it means I get
| official support for Windows apps on Linux (provided the
| support is indeed good).
| rvnx wrote:
| Perhaps it is time for the law to evolve so softwares that are
| abandoned for x years become public domain (like Epic Pinball,
| Age of Empires, etc)
| joemi wrote:
| Isn't it already like that, more or less, but the length of
| time it takes is longer than any software has so far existed?
| samrus wrote:
| you know, given that i've often said "if youre getting it for
| free, your the product" i am ok with this
|
| its not really possible for the rights holder to compete with a
| free product, since they arent harvesting data or oxploiting the
| userbase, so they need to charge. and openTTD getting a cut of
| the money really does show that this is fully collaborative
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