Changes to OpenTTD distribution on Steam
32 points by evert
32 points by evert
I think copyright needs to be revamped quite a bit. Life goes on and having original creators step in years after they left and have strong ownership rights is simply unreasonable.
Cap it to 5 years, 10 with paid extension and registration. At the very least.
Chris Sawyer sold remaining rights to Atari in 2024. 30 years after he made the game. 20 years after OpenTTD has seen initial release. OpenTTD has de-facto been commons for at least a decade by now. Just not de-iure.
While I agree, does copyright apply here at all? Isn't the whole thing with OpenTTD that at some point that declared it officially not requiring the original files anymore? Wasn't that the point when any copyright claim towards OpenTTD should be rejected as unfounded?
It's still derivative work, based in decompiled original game. I don't think OpenTTD developers want to test this in court.
Ah, didn't know it originally was decompiled. I always assumed reverse engineering was just figuring out how the data works and what values are used how. Maybe someone who knows more could expand the Wikipedia article.
If only they could claim an AI just "learned" it. ;-)
Yes. I don't know the exact dates but at least for more than 10 years OpenTTD has had a free replacement for all the assets, so copyright doesn't apply. I feel like the Atari request was based mostly on trademarks.
Wait, is the game no longer free?
The game remains free. However, to download OpenTTD on Steam moving forward, you must purchase the original Transport Tycoon Deluxe game alongside it.
Hypothesis: these are the words of an external for-profit entity, not the OpenTTD project, and this entity now exerts power over the OpenTTD project.
It can be downloaded for free from a link at the top of the blog page
Yes smells like reaction to some kind of legal threat. This is effectively an ad
Feel free to call this my conspiracy theory of the week, but the name Atari is not on my mind a lot, but I read the ScummVM wikipedia page just a short while ago.
The games were published in August 2008 on request of Atari through Majesco Entertainment, who turned to Mistic Software to port the games.[23][24] Mistic had used ScummVM for these, but failed to credit the developers. While the ScummVM team contacted gpl-violations.org for legal advice, Atari instead threatened to sue the ScummVM team, as the terms of Nintendo Wii development kit heavily restricted the use of open source software, including the GPL.
I ran into the new page on Steam discovery queue the other day and any mention of OpenTTD was buried deeply on the store page (did not see it in casual browsing). Is Atari compensating the OpenTTD devs in any way for hijacking their pages, or is this just capitulating to a legal threat? It would seem very unfair to the devs who've kept the game alive all these years if OpenTTD did not even see a project donation from this.
My speculation is that the only things the OpenTTD devs have seen are legal threats of dubious validity.
I find this change interesting. I don't like seeing copyright holders asking for money after decades of abandonment.
What I find interesting is that the downloads outside of large and/or commercial platforms are not affected. It's a world where companies let alone small places that have basically no consequences on how much money they get. In that regard, it can be a good news.
Does this mean the Steam version will allow you to choose to use the original TTD assets?
You've always been able to use the original TTD assets if you own them, the only change here is that OpenTTD has been delisted and is only available as a bundle with TTD, there's no special integration.