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This seems quite positive to me: Clearly the rightsholders are not being total jerks since they're happy to allow an OpenTTD bundle, and the original game is av

This seems quite positive to me: Clearly the rightsholders are not being total jerks since they're happy to allow an OpenTTD bundle, and the original game is available with modern fixes as well.

rasz 7mo ago
More likely they were jerks and blackmailed openttd into bundle on the threat of forcing them off steam altogether.
- LASR 7mo ago
  Yep. There is no being nice in the business of copyright. But to be fair, they’ve owned the original base game assets. Not to mention it’s a reverse engineered version of the base game.
  - ilyvion 7mo ago
    > There is no being nice in the business of copyright. Sure there is. The concept of "copyleft" is literally about using copyright to be nice.
- ocdtrekkie 7mo ago
  They legally own the assets. Taking them off Steam if the title is no longer abandoned by the publisher is a 100% reasonable decision, so you need to understand this is above and beyond what the publisher needs to do. An outcome like this more than likely means the folks working on the rerelease are fans of OpenTTD and worked internally to protect it.
  - integralid 7mo ago
    Are you sure the stream version has proprietary assets? I was under impression that they had some open assets, but I may be wrong.
    - Krutonium 7mo ago
      OpenTTD has had entirely their own assets for 15 years.
      - hatsuseno 7mo ago
        But OpenTTD itself isn't a clean-room implementation of the game, it's a branch off a decompilation of the original game. If Atari was really out to copyright the project into oblivion, they're likely to succeed in a legal sense*. Within the confines of the current laws and known history of the game, and being a fan of both works, I think this compromise is fair. *NotALawyerClause
    - kmeisthax 7mo ago
      The issue isn't the game assets. The division between assets and code is something id invented so they could open up their old game engines while still being able to sell[0] copies of the original DOOM. But that boundary is entirely a choice of the developer, and a consequence of separability of copyright - if you make something, you can break up the rights and hand them out in different ways. Legally speaking, the only thing that matters is if any part of OpenTTD is the same as any part of Transport Tycoon. This part gets a little confusing in software, because we have a proud history of both cultural norms and actual caselaw allowing unauthorized reimplementation of other people's copyright-bearing APIs. Applying copyright to software basically created a mutant form of patent law that lasts forever, so the courts had to spend decades paring it back by defining boundaries between the two. Reimplementation precedent is part of that boundary. But all of that precedent relies upon software compatibility - the argument being that if you lawfully use someone else's software library to write software, you are not surrendering ownership over your own program to your library vendor, and someone else with a compatible replacement is not infringing the original library. Legal arguments relying on reimplementation work well when the APIs in question are minimally creative and there is a large amount of third-party software that used them. The closest example would be something like Ruffle, which reimplements a Flash Player runtime that was used for a countless number of games. OpenTTD exists to reimplement precisely one game, specifically to enable a bunch of unauthorized derivative works that would be facially illegal if they had been applied directly to the TTD source code. This wouldn't fly in court. In court, OpenTTD would be judged based on substantial similarity between its code and Transport Tycoon's code. While copyright does not apply to game rules, and cloning a game is legal[1], I am not aware of any effort in OpenTTD to ensure their implementation of those rules is creatively distinct from Transport Tycoon's. In fact, OpenTTD was forked from a disassembly of the latter, which is highly likely[2] to produce substantial similarity. tl;dr I'm genuinely surprised Atari didn't sue them off Steam! [0] Translation for pedants: "have a monopoly on selling". In the creative biz, two people generally don't make money selling the same thing. [1] Trade dress and trademark lawsuits notwithstanding - The Tetris Company has done an awful lot of litigation on that front. [2] The standard way to avoid this is clean-room reverse engineering. It's not a legal requirement, of course, but it helps a lot.
retired_account 7mo ago
> If you already own OpenTTD on Steam, nothing changes. You’ll continue to receive game updates as usual. If you ever need to re-download the game, the game will remain in your Steam library. This part of the announcement was nice, too. It would suck if existing users had it deleted from their libraries.
- Nition 7mo ago
  Steam is really good about that kind of thing. Not quite the same, but I have a couple of games on my account that haven't been sold on the store for years, and I can still download them any time. I don't think there's any way for publishers to really remove a game that's already been purchased.
  - Krutonium 7mo ago
    You're correct. It's part of the Steam Publisher Agreement that basically, you can't remove your game from users who have paid for it. And if you push an update that deletes the files, Valve can, will, and has rolled back the update. Of course, there's also situations where Valve has assisted in removing titles at developers request, but it was a situation Valve was involved in - Specifically, a game called "The Ship" had a Multiplayer version, and it was built on Source, but they could never quite get it to work correctly, even with Valve's help. Wouldn't sync. Valve helped them remove the Multiplayer version. (but you still kept the single player.)
    - oddmiral 7mo ago
      Steam deleted my perfectly working Arma3 2.x for Linux with no option to return it back, so I stopped to use Steam.
denotational 7mo ago
Given the “rightsholders” have no rights over OpenTTD (only the assets are copyrightable, and OpenTTD has had its own set of open-source assets for the past 15 years), I can’t agree with this. I’m not sure how to interpret this other than Atari not wanting to compete with OpenTTD on Steam.
- Tuna-Fish 7mo ago
  It's more complicated than that. For an asset to be derived work from an original, it is not necessary for it to contain anything from the original. If you start from copyrighted assets, and meticulously replace them all with your own art piece by piece, while following the style and constraints of the originals, and while looking at the originals, I'd bet that a court would find your work to be derived from the originals and therefore under their copyright. A lot of the fan-driven reimplementations of classic games are trivially derived works, because people seem to think that the copyright only covers the pixels in the originals and if you replace them you're fine.
  - anthk 7mo ago
    FreeDoom does that with Doom and it has compatible assets but not in the same style altough they are done in such smart way that most PWADs and TC are totally playable without clashes, from Requiem to Back To Saturn. On game engines, reimplementations are not derivations at all but tools for interoperability, totally legal to create. From Wine to most of the stuff of https://osgameclones.com https://osgameclones.com, to GNUStep against NeXT/OpenStep API (and Cocoa from early OSX) and so on. If you could sell Cedega back in the day you can totally sell OpenTTD with free assets, period. The entire PC industry exists today because of cheap IBM BIOS clones from Taiwan.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - Tuna-Fish 7mo ago
      Yes, the engines are fine. And if the assets are free, then it is fine to sell the engine with them. What I'm contending is if the assets are actually free. And just because they were all created by volunteers and contain no data from the originals doesn't mean that they are actually free. The rules around derived works are complicated, and too close homages have been found to be derived works, even if there is no actual copying. If this were to go into court, things that would matter would include both "how visually similar do they look" (the answer is "very"), and "was the artist aware of and did they refer to the originals while doing their work", (given it was done by volunteers who are enthusiasts of the original game, the answers are almost certainly "yes" and "they can't prove they didn't"). And on those facts, the new art is a derived work of the original and falls under its copyright.
rpcope1 7mo ago
I kind of doubt that. Chris Sawyer is on record being really hostile to open source reimaginations, especially OpenTTD (and it's just a reimagination at this point as OpenTTD shares no assets or code with it's predecessor). It wouldn't remotely surprise me if Atari was putting legal pressure on the OpenTTD devs.
- Macha 7mo ago
  I think really hostile is overstating it. He's clearly not a fan, but he seems content to (mostly privately) disapprove rather than take actions against it, which is what would to me qualify him as hostile.
  - Chaosvex 7mo ago
    He doesn't own the rights, so there's little he could do even if he wanted.
    - Macha 7mo ago
      He did reacquire the rights in 2010 in order to release his mobile port, and only sold them back to Atari in 2024 (https://www.gamesindustry.biz/atari-acquires-transport-tycoon-ip https://www.gamesindustry.biz/atari-acquires-transport-tycoo...) for them to do this re-release. So that's 14 years where he owned the rights and was aware of OpenTTD and left it alone.
- singpolyma3 7mo ago
  I don't think they'd have any case for legitimate legal pressure but clearly some kind of underhanded bullying. Hopefully no one buys this
- manytimesaway 7mo ago
  >Chris Sawyer is on record being really hostile to open source reimaginations No he's not. This is internet gossip.

This seems quite positive to me: Clearly the rightsholders are not being total jerks since they're happy to allow an OpenTTD bundle, and the original game is available with modern fixes as well.

rasz 7mo ago

More likely they were jerks and blackmailed openttd into bundle on the threat of forcing them off steam altogether.

LASR 7mo ago
Yep. There is no being nice in the business of copyright. But to be fair, they’ve owned the original base game assets. Not to mention it’s a reverse engineered version of the base game.
- ilyvion 7mo ago
  > There is no being nice in the business of copyright. Sure there is. The concept of "copyleft" is literally about using copyright to be nice.
ocdtrekkie 7mo ago
They legally own the assets. Taking them off Steam if the title is no longer abandoned by the publisher is a 100% reasonable decision, so you need to understand this is above and beyond what the publisher needs to do. An outcome like this more than likely means the folks working on the rerelease are fans of OpenTTD and worked internally to protect it.
- integralid 7mo ago
  Are you sure the stream version has proprietary assets? I was under impression that they had some open assets, but I may be wrong.
  - Krutonium 7mo ago
    OpenTTD has had entirely their own assets for 15 years.
    - hatsuseno 7mo ago
      But OpenTTD itself isn't a clean-room implementation of the game, it's a branch off a decompilation of the original game. If Atari was really out to copyright the project into oblivion, they're likely to succeed in a legal sense*. Within the confines of the current laws and known history of the game, and being a fan of both works, I think this compromise is fair. *NotALawyerClause
  - kmeisthax 7mo ago
    The issue isn't the game assets. The division between assets and code is something id invented so they could open up their old game engines while still being able to sell[0] copies of the original DOOM. But that boundary is entirely a choice of the developer, and a consequence of separability of copyright - if you make something, you can break up the rights and hand them out in different ways. Legally speaking, the only thing that matters is if any part of OpenTTD is the same as any part of Transport Tycoon. This part gets a little confusing in software, because we have a proud history of both cultural norms and actual caselaw allowing unauthorized reimplementation of other people's copyright-bearing APIs. Applying copyright to software basically created a mutant form of patent law that lasts forever, so the courts had to spend decades paring it back by defining boundaries between the two. Reimplementation precedent is part of that boundary. But all of that precedent relies upon software compatibility - the argument being that if you lawfully use someone else's software library to write software, you are not surrendering ownership over your own program to your library vendor, and someone else with a compatible replacement is not infringing the original library. Legal arguments relying on reimplementation work well when the APIs in question are minimally creative and there is a large amount of third-party software that used them. The closest example would be something like Ruffle, which reimplements a Flash Player runtime that was used for a countless number of games. OpenTTD exists to reimplement precisely one game, specifically to enable a bunch of unauthorized derivative works that would be facially illegal if they had been applied directly to the TTD source code. This wouldn't fly in court. In court, OpenTTD would be judged based on substantial similarity between its code and Transport Tycoon's code. While copyright does not apply to game rules, and cloning a game is legal[1], I am not aware of any effort in OpenTTD to ensure their implementation of those rules is creatively distinct from Transport Tycoon's. In fact, OpenTTD was forked from a disassembly of the latter, which is highly likely[2] to produce substantial similarity. tl;dr I'm genuinely surprised Atari didn't sue them off Steam! [0] Translation for pedants: "have a monopoly on selling". In the creative biz, two people generally don't make money selling the same thing. [1] Trade dress and trademark lawsuits notwithstanding - The Tetris Company has done an awful lot of litigation on that front. [2] The standard way to avoid this is clean-room reverse engineering. It's not a legal requirement, of course, but it helps a lot.

retired_account 7mo ago

> If you already own OpenTTD on Steam, nothing changes. You’ll continue to receive game updates as usual. If you ever need to re-download the game, the game will remain in your Steam library. This part of the announcement was nice, too. It would suck if existing users had it deleted from their libraries.

Nition 7mo ago
Steam is really good about that kind of thing. Not quite the same, but I have a couple of games on my account that haven't been sold on the store for years, and I can still download them any time. I don't think there's any way for publishers to really remove a game that's already been purchased.
- Krutonium 7mo ago
  You're correct. It's part of the Steam Publisher Agreement that basically, you can't remove your game from users who have paid for it. And if you push an update that deletes the files, Valve can, will, and has rolled back the update. Of course, there's also situations where Valve has assisted in removing titles at developers request, but it was a situation Valve was involved in - Specifically, a game called "The Ship" had a Multiplayer version, and it was built on Source, but they could never quite get it to work correctly, even with Valve's help. Wouldn't sync. Valve helped them remove the Multiplayer version. (but you still kept the single player.)
  - oddmiral 7mo ago
    Steam deleted my perfectly working Arma3 2.x for Linux with no option to return it back, so I stopped to use Steam.

denotational 7mo ago

Given the “rightsholders” have no rights over OpenTTD (only the assets are copyrightable, and OpenTTD has had its own set of open-source assets for the past 15 years), I can’t agree with this. I’m not sure how to interpret this other than Atari not wanting to compete with OpenTTD on Steam.

Tuna-Fish 7mo ago
It's more complicated than that. For an asset to be derived work from an original, it is not necessary for it to contain anything from the original. If you start from copyrighted assets, and meticulously replace them all with your own art piece by piece, while following the style and constraints of the originals, and while looking at the originals, I'd bet that a court would find your work to be derived from the originals and therefore under their copyright. A lot of the fan-driven reimplementations of classic games are trivially derived works, because people seem to think that the copyright only covers the pixels in the originals and if you replace them you're fine.
- anthk 7mo ago
  FreeDoom does that with Doom and it has compatible assets but not in the same style altough they are done in such smart way that most PWADs and TC are totally playable without clashes, from Requiem to Back To Saturn. On game engines, reimplementations are not derivations at all but tools for interoperability, totally legal to create. From Wine to most of the stuff of https://osgameclones.com https://osgameclones.com, to GNUStep against NeXT/OpenStep API (and Cocoa from early OSX) and so on. If you could sell Cedega back in the day you can totally sell OpenTTD with free assets, period. The entire PC industry exists today because of cheap IBM BIOS clones from Taiwan.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Tuna-Fish 7mo ago
    Yes, the engines are fine. And if the assets are free, then it is fine to sell the engine with them. What I'm contending is if the assets are actually free. And just because they were all created by volunteers and contain no data from the originals doesn't mean that they are actually free. The rules around derived works are complicated, and too close homages have been found to be derived works, even if there is no actual copying. If this were to go into court, things that would matter would include both "how visually similar do they look" (the answer is "very"), and "was the artist aware of and did they refer to the originals while doing their work", (given it was done by volunteers who are enthusiasts of the original game, the answers are almost certainly "yes" and "they can't prove they didn't"). And on those facts, the new art is a derived work of the original and falls under its copyright.

rpcope1 7mo ago

I kind of doubt that. Chris Sawyer is on record being really hostile to open source reimaginations, especially OpenTTD (and it's just a reimagination at this point as OpenTTD shares no assets or code with it's predecessor). It wouldn't remotely surprise me if Atari was putting legal pressure on the OpenTTD devs.

Macha 7mo ago
I think really hostile is overstating it. He's clearly not a fan, but he seems content to (mostly privately) disapprove rather than take actions against it, which is what would to me qualify him as hostile.
- Chaosvex 7mo ago
  He doesn't own the rights, so there's little he could do even if he wanted.
  - Macha 7mo ago
    He did reacquire the rights in 2010 in order to release his mobile port, and only sold them back to Atari in 2024 (https://www.gamesindustry.biz/atari-acquires-transport-tycoon-ip https://www.gamesindustry.biz/atari-acquires-transport-tycoo...) for them to do this re-release. So that's 14 years where he owned the rights and was aware of OpenTTD and left it alone.
singpolyma3 7mo ago
I don't think they'd have any case for legitimate legal pressure but clearly some kind of underhanded bullying. Hopefully no one buys this
manytimesaway 7mo ago
>Chris Sawyer is on record being really hostile to open source reimaginations No he's not. This is internet gossip.