alt.hn

3/19/2026 at 5:27:17 PM

An update on Steam / GOG changes for OpenTTD

 https://www.openttd.org/news/2026/03/19/steam-changes-update

by jandeboevrie

3/19/2026 at 7:10:17 PM

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.

by aeturnum

3/19/2026 at 7:53:28 PM

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.

by superxpro12

3/20/2026 at 3:31:24 AM

> 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.

Emulators and game engine clones may encourage "stealing", but they are also unique creations. The people who develop said software are typically careful about keeping their software separate from copyrighted materials. In the case of OpenTTD, they did so by creating their own graphics and sound assets to accompany the game engine.

If you are claiming that creating an independent clone of the game engine is stealing, you are entitled to your own opinion. But do understand that it is an opinion and not a fact.

I would also ask you to consider the consequences if that opinion were codified into law. It would make all forms of progress (e.g. literary and technical) nearly impossible since nearly all ideas are derivative. To give an example: the computing landscape would be very different. IBM compatibles would not have been a thing, leaving the market either fragmented or consolidated in the hands of a single company. Oh sure, there were companies that did steal by producing verbatim copies of the IBM PC ROM or the mainboard layout ... but we are talking about a reimplementation in the case of IBM compatibles and OpenTTD, not copies.

Come to think of it, the entire computer industry would have been set back by decades with an excessively strong IP regime. No one seriously classifies the ABC as the first computer, yet the courts used it to strike down patents on early computers. In the early days, IBM played games with IP licensing to try to restrict their competition, something the courts shot down. AT&T didn't give away Unix, nor did they license patents on transistors out of the goodness of their heart. They did so because regulators and the courts recognized that IP could be used to stifle competition (and, by extension, it would have inhibited progress). So I doubt that the courts would agree on emulation or game engine clones being stealing either.

by II2II

3/20/2026 at 6:46:23 AM

Ehh, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. And in the case of openttd, it's not the engine that has the legal problem, it's the graphics and the sound. Openttd is an engine to play transport tycoon content. If openttd distributes transport tycoon's graphics and sound, (which they were) they are infringing on the owners right to distribute.

Update, I got openTTD confused with openRCT, It looks like openttd did redo the graphics and sound, so I think the parent post is correct and atari has little to no legal ground to stand on, the only thing they could reasonably claim is trademark, that is, it is them using the name transport tycoon that is the problem. And that is still not theft, it is trademark infringement.

At this point I would like to plug Simutrans a transport tycoon clone that actually took the effort to make their own graphics and sound. But really, as much as I enjoy simutrans any normal transport tycoon connoisseur will hate it, a bit too different and clunky for them.

https://www.simutrans.com but steam is probably the easiest way to play.

by somat

3/20/2026 at 11:32:16 AM

>which they were)

1) No, is not the case, stop the FUD.

2) Simutrans it's half propietary and a good atempt of SPAM, dear friend.

3) Ok, fair, you corrected yourself. But on OpenTTD the OpenSFX and the rest are actually a way to create both compatible graphics and sounds with the existing MODs and stand out as themselves, kinda like FreeDoom: it's obviously made to be compatible with the Doom assets for walls and the like, but the artwork it's closer to a modern HL than Doom. FreeDoom needs to be like a weird Doom in a parallel universe for floors, walls and the like because PWADs demand it so the art looks like compatible (texturing, tiling, lightning) while not being an obvious Doom rip off. And yet it does, I played lots of classic Doom2 compatible PWADs and TC's and the FreeDoom assets perfectly blend ingame. Strain.wad looks even greater.

Look: https://freedoom.github.io/

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 8:37:38 PM

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.

by AuthAuth

3/19/2026 at 11:49:23 PM

This makes me wonder why squatter's rights are not a thing here...but I don't know much about the current and previous legal status of the open genres like OpenTTD.

by ThunderSizzle

3/19/2026 at 9:47:30 PM

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.

by jscd

3/20/2026 at 1:52:28 AM

There is in fact legal precedent showing that it is not entitlement.

Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corp.

> The object code of a program may be copyrighted as expression, 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), but it also contains ideas and performs functions that are not entitled to copyright protection. See 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).

These corporations have actually gone to court over this and lost. It's just that they technically won by bankrupting their opponents via legal costs.

by matheusmoreira

3/20/2026 at 4:50:29 AM

> Historically, after 28 years, most works became public domain and that meant you could do literally whatever you want with it

Historically, all works were public domain at all times.

by thaumasiotes

3/20/2026 at 1:45:19 AM

> clones of games in an open source lib are all stealing something

It's not illegal to create a compatible game engine. The functional ideas inside the games are not protected by copyright. So long as games are clean room reverse engineered there should be no problem.

Actually, even if the reverse engineering was not clean room, it might not be a problem.

Sony Computer Entertainment v. Connectix Corp.

> The object code of a program may be copyrighted as expression, 17 U.S.C. § 102(a), but it also contains ideas and performs functions that are not entitled to copyright protection. See 17 U.S.C. § 102(b).

> Object code cannot, however, be read by humans.

> The unprotected ideas and functions of the code therefore are frequently undiscoverable in the absence of investigation and translation that may require copying the copyrighted material.

> We conclude that, under the facts of this case and our precedent, Connectix's intermediate copying and use of Sony's copyrighted BIOS was a fair use for the purpose of gaining access to the unprotected elements of Sony's software.

by matheusmoreira

3/20/2026 at 2:46:40 AM

That's a narrow fair use exception. Many of these open game engines are effectively 1:1 decompilations of the original games, and it would be shocking if they were not effectively copyrighted the same as the original.

I don't think this has been tested in court, but the recent flood of Nintendo game decompilations is likely to change that.

by Scaevolus

3/20/2026 at 11:41:10 AM

Pre BSD's (386BSD) where in the same case with AT&T Unix and after a few years of rewritting code under BSD licenses they were perfectly ok to ship, from NetBSD 0.9 to FreeBSD, OpenBSD was a NetBSD fork.

Current OpenTTD has no former TTD code since decades ago. I remember Solene@ from OpenBSD (now ex-user) playing OpenTTD for MacPPC (PowerPC G4) a few years ago as she had in issue with mouse input.

Good luck running decompiled X86 code as is.

by anthk

3/20/2026 at 3:42:23 AM

Atari could have done nothing but re-release transport tycoon and have it stand on its own merits. This is more like they’re leeching off of an IP they’ve more or less not paid any attention to for 20 years.

by Aeolun

3/19/2026 at 9:08:31 PM

> ...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.

by arvid-lind

3/19/2026 at 10:32:55 PM

> 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.

by bigyabai

3/20/2026 at 11:22:39 AM

Stealing what? I own my legal copy of Ars Fatalis which came as a free with a PC gaming magazine from Spain. Now I just use the game data with Arx Libertatis. No one was ripped.

If Ars Libertatis was complete they should have to create their own complete underground story replacing every asset and lore by hand, kinda like FreeDoom/Blasphemer and so on.

An actual libre engine reusing propietary data in a illegal way would be uMario, as it has literal ripped off BMP images pixel per pixel depicting SMB for the NES. And yet the game engine being GPL or MIT would be legal but the bundled game data is not; the creator would just have to use (and state the clear CC licenses) the copyleft artwork from Secret Maryo Chronicles or whatever it's being called today and everything would work as is.

Instead of Mario you would reuse SMC sprites being adapted for the contraints (pixel perfect for feet for instance) and so and the only issue would be that the levels themselves would be copyrighted.

A single level as Supertux2 does is not a copyright issue because well, it's just a single one and a clear homage to the first level of SMB and even the level is named like that. It might fall under fair use, if I were Nintendo I woudn't sue them because unlike uMario, Supertux2 did things in a respectful manner.

Bear in mind that OpenTTD never did what uMario it's doing. When it had no open content you had to point to the copyrighted data yourself, be from the demo, be from the full game. Later OpenGFX and OpenSFX were created to replace every commercial asset and now OpenTTD has a downloader to get all the CC assets yourself without needing no commercial data at all.

The open content doesn't even have the original levels from TTD as uMario does.

by anthk

3/20/2026 at 1:33:08 AM

Completely agree. They didn't go after the developers. They didn't shut people down. They didn't threaten legal action. Looks like they just reached out to the people involved in the project and peacefully worked with them instead, even helped with the server costs. Looks like everybody is winning here. Everything is at peace.

I've gained huge respect for Atari. It's a breath of fresh air compared to the likes of EA, Nintendo, Square Enix.

by matheusmoreira

3/19/2026 at 8:17:13 PM

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.

by bombcar

3/19/2026 at 8:29:44 PM

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.

by zem

3/19/2026 at 8:34:51 PM

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.

by bombcar

3/19/2026 at 8:57:57 PM

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.

by OkayPhysicist

3/19/2026 at 8:41:49 PM

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.

by zem

3/19/2026 at 10:20:33 PM

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.

by da_chicken

3/19/2026 at 10:27:09 PM

i don't care so much about his IP rights (legal) as about the fact that this is his project (moral)

by zem

3/19/2026 at 11:10:56 PM

Sort of. Releasing something into the world is, in a real sense, giving it up. At some point, you don't have ownership of it anymore. You're the one that created it, but you're no longer in control of it.

Copyright being as extremely long as it is makes us think that making something once means we should profit from it in perpetuity, but that's not really beneficial for society to work like that. That's exactly why patents don't work like that.

Remember, the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new works. Well, if you can create one work and profit from it effectively (i.e., your entire career), why would you create another work? That's just a waste of effort. That's literally the business model of IP holding companies. They don't create. They just own. They're rent-seeking.

by da_chicken

3/19/2026 at 6:06:05 PM

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).

by legitster

3/19/2026 at 9:31:50 PM

> 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.

by PurpleRamen

3/19/2026 at 11:12:35 PM

OpenTTD has an automatic update mechanism already and its installation is as simple as could be.

Steam succeeded because of its store, which still has the best prices on the market. That’s their original moat. Their current moat is sunk costs. People have thousands of dollars in their Steam Library. At this point Steam’s advantages as software are negligible, especially considering its poor performance.

by philistine

3/20/2026 at 3:45:19 AM

Steam, and Valve are solely responsible for me never having to deal with Windows, because they’ve made linux gaming easy. I’d use steam just for that.

by Aeolun

3/20/2026 at 8:06:55 AM

>Steam succeeded because of its store, which still has the best prices on the market. That’s their original moat. Their current moat is sunk cost.

Then how come epic games store is not able to get a foothold for years despite offering literally free games? Not even children which are most likely to use it because of Fortnite use it for anything but that. Steam is objectively the better store and game launcher regardless or price or "sunk cost".

by akimbostrawman

3/19/2026 at 11:11:36 PM

Easiest of all is `pacman -S openttd`.

by NoboruWataya

3/20/2026 at 5:07:18 AM

Or even `winget install openttd`

by satertek

3/20/2026 at 4:53:22 AM

> That's cumbersome.

Nothing cumbersome about it. No one who wants to do this is going to fail at it, or even be inconvenienced.

> That the main reason why all big platforms succeed and the small platforms fail. Comfort is just too valuable.

The value of the platform, in this case, is that people know where it is, but they don't know where openTTD is.

by thaumasiotes

3/19/2026 at 6:16:51 PM

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.

by lstodd

3/19/2026 at 6:37:26 PM

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.

by dryarzeg

3/19/2026 at 7:19:16 PM

> 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.

by nimih

3/19/2026 at 9:50:38 PM

> 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".

by ux266478

3/19/2026 at 9:36:39 PM

> 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.

by PurpleRamen

3/20/2026 at 7:22:12 AM

Steam solves delivery, not so much discovery

by kolinko

3/20/2026 at 3:03:43 AM

there are more platforms for searching for games: youtube, google, chatgpt... it's not so dire that if steam bans you then there is no way to find a game

by Nathanba

3/19/2026 at 6:50:26 PM

> 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).

by zer00eyz

3/19/2026 at 6:59:06 PM

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

by starkparker

3/19/2026 at 7:04:23 PM

Does it matter? People just look for the bottle with a rooster anyway.

by whstl

3/19/2026 at 8:21:44 PM

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.

by zer00eyz

3/19/2026 at 7:28:54 PM

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).

by shevy-java

3/19/2026 at 10:38:46 PM

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.

by Asooka

3/19/2026 at 6:32:51 PM

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

by repeekad

3/19/2026 at 6:34:39 PM

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.

by nazgulsenpai

3/19/2026 at 8:07:50 PM

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.

by polothesecond

3/19/2026 at 7:53:20 PM

Gaming feels dead to devs these days. But I know that's not what gamers care about.

by johnnyanmac

3/19/2026 at 6:21:23 PM

> limited by no "platforms" but only by their own lack of desire.

Or Google's low ranking of their content

by throwaway0q5347

3/19/2026 at 6:27:47 PM

I don't even.

Relying on third-party ranking of whatever is a clear indicator of lack of effort.

by lstodd

3/19/2026 at 6:48:20 PM

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.

by StableAlkyne

3/19/2026 at 7:53:49 PM

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.

by BowBun

3/20/2026 at 4:58:29 AM

> 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.

So, in your opinion, we can cut out the reliance on third parties by relying on third parties?

by thaumasiotes

3/19/2026 at 6:56:39 PM

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.

by skydhash

3/19/2026 at 7:55:02 PM

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).

by johnnyanmac

3/20/2026 at 7:57:58 AM

Although I agree on the general point, it's technically not true that the internet is "still at open as it always was". Nation states are increasingly putting up barriers and filters, and (pushed by commercial interests) forcing people to identify themselves.

by toyg

3/19/2026 at 6:40:11 PM

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).

by itsdesmond

3/19/2026 at 8:44:48 PM

>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.

by Barrin92

3/20/2026 at 12:58:02 AM

People who are not aware of a topic are not lacking courage for not engaging in it. Being damned without awareness of salvation is more of a St. Augustine thing. And Kant said my ancestors were less than human, so fuck him.

by itsdesmond

3/20/2026 at 1:33:46 AM

>People who are not aware

who isn't aware? If we were in the 80s and you lived in a village without an internet connection, sure but today everyone is aware of the means to liberate their computing environment or whatever else is bugging them. That's not an excuse any more for virtually anyone. The average American spends, not metaphorically 'literally', actually literally five hours per day on their smartphone. If you can doom scroll for five hours you can learn how to use linux, or get on a treadmill to lose some pounds.

the reality is people have the option to choose between comfort and autonomy and they voluntarily choose the former and call people annoying who preach about internet freedom and privacy. Which they might very well be but it also makes it clear they know and don't care.

by Barrin92

3/20/2026 at 4:38:45 AM

>the buck always stops at "I"

Wait if it is your responsibility to stop corporations from doing bad things, why are they still doing them?

I didn’t realize there was an individual to talk to about this but, while I’ve got your attention, frankly for the sake of mankind you need to do better at this. They are running wild out here

by jrflowers

3/19/2026 at 7:00:34 PM

> 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.

by skydhash

3/19/2026 at 7:19:43 PM

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.

by itsdesmond

3/19/2026 at 7:56:33 PM

>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.

by johnnyanmac

3/20/2026 at 12:05:14 AM

I played quite a bit of OpenTTD a year or so ago and I'm pretty sure I downloaded it straight from their site.

by Rapzid

3/19/2026 at 8:44:11 PM

The open internet is a whisper in a screaming crowd. Yes, it’s technically still there.

by jl6

3/19/2026 at 6:54:05 PM

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.

by iso1631

3/19/2026 at 7:25:57 PM

And what did you discover on hn? Let me show you https://www.oldunreal.com/ ;)

by imp0cat

3/20/2026 at 2:08:17 AM

I'm glad to have opend that link. Brought back memories.

head-shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKgyH9k1CSM

by adolph

3/20/2026 at 12:26:50 PM

TO me, UT is a modern game -- probably the last FPS I bought (well Elite Force which I think was based on UT)

I was more of a DN3D person. Laptop and a desktop, connected via a serial cable, great fun. Computer gaming was far more social in the 90s.

by iso1631

3/20/2026 at 3:14:02 PM

Yeah, I never got into DN3D, maybe b/c it was Windows only? I might be misremembering, but I played UT on Mac with friends by setting up AppleTalk using rj11 adapters. My now-spouse called it the game before the game and it was perhaps more social than the actual game.

by adolph

3/19/2026 at 7:51:33 PM

That's why we need to reel in these platforms. The mobile ones are slowly starting to relent, but that's only the beginning.

by johnnyanmac

3/19/2026 at 10:34:14 PM

The mobile ones only have one storefront. PC games distribution is a healthy and competitive market.

by bigyabai

3/19/2026 at 10:59:59 PM

Healthier, yes. But there can be improvements. Steam still has a few more dials to tune down to truly make it fair.

by johnnyanmac

3/19/2026 at 7:02:17 PM

[dead]

by devnotes77

3/19/2026 at 6:08:13 PM

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…

by 999900000999

3/19/2026 at 6:42:01 PM

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".

by applfanboysbgon

3/19/2026 at 7:20:21 PM

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

by 999900000999

3/19/2026 at 6:48:57 PM

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.

by eykanal

3/19/2026 at 7:56:50 PM

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

by 20k

3/19/2026 at 9:06:12 PM

> 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.

by freehorse

3/19/2026 at 11:15:07 PM

Open source is a culture that includes its users. Open source is getting screwed over because at the first whiff of a capitalist losing a buck open source retreated and hid.

by philistine

3/19/2026 at 8:46:54 PM

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

by entropicdrifter

3/19/2026 at 7:20:20 PM

"no responsibility" but they could have chosen not to intentionally hurt them

by singpolyma3

3/19/2026 at 7:58:56 PM

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?

by ndiddy

3/19/2026 at 9:05:22 PM

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.

by applfanboysbgon

3/19/2026 at 9:11:21 PM

> 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.

by freehorse

3/19/2026 at 9:19:09 PM

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.

by applfanboysbgon

3/19/2026 at 9:47:52 PM

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.

by moggers123

3/19/2026 at 11:05:36 PM

You put it up for sale and hope nostalgia sells something for you aka the original plan.

This argument is like "you buy a McDonald's then realize there is a burger king across the road. What do you do?" Yes one is a clone of the other. But you don't get to just bulldoze the burger king.

by singpolyma3

3/19/2026 at 10:51:29 PM

Seems like a pretty clear case of caveat emptor

by rablackburn

3/19/2026 at 9:19:53 PM

The Dwarf Fortress route.

by ZeWaka

3/19/2026 at 6:08:16 PM

>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.

by ApolloFortyNine

3/19/2026 at 7:13:01 PM

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.

by charcircuit

3/19/2026 at 7:19:34 PM

It's clearly exploitative

by singpolyma3

3/19/2026 at 8:29:59 PM

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.

by Lammy

3/19/2026 at 7:28:36 PM

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.

by WarcrimeActual

3/19/2026 at 7:40:01 PM

> 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".

by JoshTriplett

3/19/2026 at 7:45:50 PM

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.

by ApolloFortyNine

3/19/2026 at 7:57:13 PM

> 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.

by JoshTriplett

3/19/2026 at 11:18:32 PM

CorsixTH requires Theme Hospital assets but we didn't clone or otherwise steal anything that we ship, we require you to supply the assets precisely because we aren't. I presume that's true of OpenTTD as well. In the United States copyright protection for games covers the art and text but not the rules and Oracle vs. Google established reimplentations being fair even when exposing the same api. Truely novel game rules can be protected by patents per Nintendo.

by TheCycoONE

3/19/2026 at 7:43:00 PM

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.

by WarcrimeActual

3/19/2026 at 7:48:19 PM

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.

by JoshTriplett

3/19/2026 at 8:08:56 PM

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.

by gmueckl

3/19/2026 at 8:17:39 PM

"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.

by JoshTriplett

3/20/2026 at 2:26:01 AM

Show a set of random persons gameplay video clips from TTD and OpenTTD in its default settings and ask them which one of the two games they are watching. They'll be struggling.

It is about the entirety of the product, not its parts.

by gmueckl

3/20/2026 at 11:50:39 AM

That's the point of game engine reimplementations, but again OpenTTD has no original TTD worlds.

Simcity 2000/3000 and Lincity-NG can look pretty close at a distance too, the same with FreeCIV and Civilization 2000.

If the issue it's due to the menu layout and such that can be set with ease, GUI presets from original TTD and a 'new' one (as default) and call it done.

Arx Fatalis itself it's a Ultima Underworld inspired clone. It's more than obvious. Deus Ex it's a weird Shadowrun retelling with better hacking depictions replacing the magic shadow ruling overlods with a panopticon AI and ripping off every US conspiracy from the XFiles.

Both RPG's can be played in pretty much the same way: half stealth/half run and gun depending on your mood, augmentations, hacking to retrieve useful info, doing secondary errands, the cyberpunk theme...

Halo does the same with Marathon and Bioshock borrows a lot from System Shock.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 8:33:30 PM

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.

by einr

3/19/2026 at 8:38:03 PM

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.

by Cthulhu_

3/19/2026 at 5:51:24 PM

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.

by beardsciences

3/19/2026 at 6:03:32 PM

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?

by paxys

3/19/2026 at 6:20:31 PM

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).

by striking

3/19/2026 at 6:28:08 PM

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.

by benoau

3/19/2026 at 10:22:28 PM

Does OpenTTD contain any Atari IP? I thought it was completely re-written, and did not include any of the original game assets?

by limagnolia

3/20/2026 at 1:56:42 AM

I don't think so but simply asserting their rights is complicated and expensive.

by benoau

3/19/2026 at 6:28:00 PM

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?

by nemomarx

3/19/2026 at 7:19:16 PM

Until the IP is flipped to another owner and the final squeeze begins. Gotta mirror this.

by RGamma

3/20/2026 at 8:03:46 PM

> 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.

Is there no way either platform can simply stop selling the game and de-list it from the store yet people who purchased it can continue to play uninterrupted?

by MisterTea

3/19/2026 at 5:58:22 PM

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?

by paxys

3/19/2026 at 6:10:56 PM

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.

by legitster

3/20/2026 at 12:45:22 AM

See also what happened with Tron 2.0, where Disney unexpectedly published a software patch 20 years later that obsoleted the community work necessary to get it running on modern Windows 10+. The community was ecstatic, not offended, that the IP owner had randomly decided to contribute. Sure, a lot of their work was either disrupted or nullified, but that's not someone 'ripping off' the community's investment — that's someone validating the community's investment. Given how other companies act, 'validation and cooperation' after a long drought of inattention is perhaps the least likely outcome here. It's so nice to see it.

(Of course, in an ideal world, companies would not be wholly inattentive to older properties — but that's basically unsolvable without economic-level solutions for the problems of capitalism, so I don't have any ideas specific to video games to offer.)

by altairprime

3/19/2026 at 6:04:39 PM

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.

by Closi

3/19/2026 at 6:05:10 PM

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.

by paxys

3/19/2026 at 6:11:48 PM

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.

by jorl17

3/19/2026 at 6:19:05 PM

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)

by Closi

3/19/2026 at 7:58:56 PM

Clean room reimplementations of software projects have been tested in court and are legally fine

by 20k

3/20/2026 at 3:29:14 AM

Software projects that do things like edit spreadsheets, transform data, do calculations, yes.

Software projects that are themselves a type of art that is itself copyrighted, lol no.

by ikiris

3/19/2026 at 7:06:29 PM

- 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.

by anthk

3/20/2026 at 6:23:52 AM

This list might just be survivor bias though - it only includes the projects where they didn’t get sued and taken down (either because the developer was ok with them, or because they strayed far enough into fair use).

There are clear counter examples - see Tengen vs Nintendo, Nintendo vs Palworld, Microsoft vs halo inspired games, Microsoft vs Minecraft clones. Most are settled out court. Examples that go to court tend to be from companies with budgets to fight, lots of projects will just get DMCA’d and won’t fight, or will back down after a legal letter.

Ultimately copyright and IP infringement is decided in the courts, and the rules aren’t entirely black and white.

by Closi

3/20/2026 at 7:47:53 AM

The actual list at https://osgameclones.com it's so huge that literally invalidates any point stated by HN commenters ignoring that, yes, Giana Sisters for the C64 was taken down but after that several Mario shareware clones existed for PC and a few years later we even got Supertux and, in the 2000's, Secret Maryo Chronicles which got renamed in order to avoid any issues with "Mario" as a TM, but the gameplay was 99% the same of Super Mario World.

On software recreating something propietary:

- FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD... vs AT&T Unix.

- GNU+Linux or GNU+Hurd against propietary Unix kernels.

- Coreutils+Findutils+Sharutils... every tool reimplemented being propietary.

- Bash, GAWK, GCC, binutils, Clisp, SBCL, GNU GCJ+Classpath, Red, FreePascal+Lazarus, GNUStep+WMaker, LessTif, EMWM+Motif vs Irix' Maxx Desktop (still propietary, and from the 90's) Gaim, AMSN, 7zip, Haxima+Nahzgul (and Ultima it's still being sold at GOG), Supertux2, Supertuxkart, ReTux (very Wario like), Hexoshi (Metroid), SMC (Super Mario World), Pingus (Lemmings), XMMS/Xine cloning WinAmp and maybe PowerDVD (Xine with skins), WordTsar for Wordstar, Nano for propietary Pico (and Alpine for propietary Pine), BSD vi and Amiga vim for maybe propietary vi under AT&T/commercial Unix, Lincity and Lincity-NG for Simcity, FreeCiv against Civilization (it can use both the OG Civ rules and their custom ones), Frozen Bubble (I think the level set it's from the Neo Geo release), KGoldrunner and such for Lode Runner, Kapman for Pacman, every BSD shipping Tetris and Boggle, GNU Octave for Matlab....

The list example for both software and games being just reimplementation/clones of propietary tools goes on an on. Even DOS had propietary clones which had to reimplement the same interface as MSDOS because if not the tools written for it would just crash. Same commands, same output, same formating tools, same memory layout, they ran the same DOS binaries and drivers...

by anthk

3/20/2026 at 5:27:03 PM

Giving a list of examples doesn’t mean this example is legal or would stand up in court.

Other than the fact that most of these are very different situations, but even if they were the same it is like saying “snorting coccaine is legal because I can give a list of celebrities that have done it and have not been arrested”

The examples that are similar - eg FreeCiv, imo probably survive because of the decisions and polices of the original publisher rather than some magical legal protection which allows you to make 1:1 copies without being sued.

TuxRacer isn’t really a copy of anything, and an OS or computer utility will likely be treated in a materially different way to a computer game by a court of law.

by Closi

3/20/2026 at 7:00:42 PM

No, your example can't stand out a simple analysis since both GNU and BSD reimplemented propietary UNIX without the original code, as the OpenTTD rewrite is. How come OpenTTD works on a G4 PowerPC arch if the original code was written in x86 assembly?

GNU AWK it's literally copycat of Unix AWK having all of the functionality of the original AWK without being bound to the original source. So is GCC vs any vendored Unix 'cc', 'ld' and 'as', where GNU GAS was the alternative.

Again, there's GNU Bash against Unix SH, with the same exact flags for interoperativity. Ditto with Alpine against Pine, or GNU Nano against Pico with the literal same interface, commands and layout. And these are older than TTD itself.

Should I go in? Lesstif against Motif. If you installed Lesstif tons of Motif stuff would work straightly as is, as XPDF did. Another one? XMMS. Once you skinned both the were the same.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 6:47:38 PM

[flagged]

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 7:03:20 PM

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.

by bjt

3/19/2026 at 7:08:24 PM

Sony vs Bleem. They already lost this case in court.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 7:55:43 PM

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.

by comex

3/20/2026 at 7:56:20 AM

FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD at first when every BSD OS was just part of 386BSD it used to have AT&T code. That code was rewritten replacing every propietary part and after that (and noticing BSD 4.4 was incomplete) we got clean FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD from a NetBSD fork.

Another similar case with exact grounds was GNU which with Linux it completed an OS albeit in a hacky way, because the original OS would have been GNU+Hurd, but both are reimplementing Unix. Same SH derived shell, but extended. Kinda like OpenTTD. We have GNU Coreutils, Findutils, GNU AWK reimplementing and extending AWK (even when AWK was propietary), GNU Zip, Tar... the list goes on and on.

Oh, another one: Lesstif vs Motif. Same UI, if not very, very close to Motif 1.2 in order to be interoperable. Today it doesn't matter because nearly a decade a go Motif was relicensed into the GPL, but tons of libre software depending on propietary Motif was just seamlessly running with LessTIF libraries except for some rough edges/bugs. One of the most known example was DDD, a GUI for GDB.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 7:34:40 PM

I think I'm even older than you, because I remember what Nintendo did to the Great Giana Sisters.

by InsideOutSanta

3/20/2026 at 7:57:38 AM

And later the DOS PC world spawned several Mario clones as legal shareware.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 7:39:09 PM

Good luck making an open source Pokemon game clone and see how it goes

by haunter

3/20/2026 at 7:45:40 AM

Tuxemon. And before that, several more a few decades ago.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 6:27:47 PM

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.

by Ekaros

3/19/2026 at 6:15:18 PM

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.

by Macha

3/19/2026 at 6:52:33 PM

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?

by mghackerlady

3/20/2026 at 12:53:13 AM

BSD was resolved by a settlement of BSD dropping a handful of disputed files and mutual copyright acknowledgement after it was determined that the company suing them also infringed in BSD’s copyright, so as precedent it’s pretty inconclusive

by Macha

3/19/2026 at 6:13:19 PM

Its not a clean ground-up rewrite. They dis-assembled the original binaries into assembly and started from there.

by not_the_fda

3/19/2026 at 6:08:50 PM

I read somewhere that it's not a clean room rewrite but rather it started off as a reverse engineering.

by sylos

3/19/2026 at 7:03:02 PM

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)

by iso1631

3/19/2026 at 7:24:11 PM

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.

by ikiris

3/19/2026 at 7:38:22 PM

[dead]

by hrmtst93837

3/19/2026 at 8:15:47 PM

[dead]

by hrmtst93837

3/19/2026 at 6:09:19 PM

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.

by designerarvid

3/19/2026 at 6:21:02 PM

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.

by Sharlin

3/19/2026 at 6:49:09 PM

Learn something new, dear GenZers:

https://osgameclones.com/

Maybe you all realize how much brainwashed from corporations yall actually are.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 8:03:25 PM

GenZ?

by designerarvid

3/19/2026 at 7:07:51 PM

Look and Feel in computers and how it interacts with copyright is hardly something new

https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v03/03HarvJL...

by iso1631

3/19/2026 at 7:12:50 PM

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.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 7:42:16 PM

> 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

by iso1631

3/20/2026 at 7:49:55 AM

Wine literally copies both the Win32 UI -needed to respect that for interop- , some of the kernel functions and Win32 which is just an API implementation and not copyrighteable per se. If not, we woudn't have GNU. Or Microsoft services for Unix.

by anthk

3/19/2026 at 6:26:14 PM

Reproducing is absolutely not a copyright violation. Otherwise emulators would have no legal option to exist.

by orphea

3/19/2026 at 8:23:05 PM

That is a question about which copyrights are enforced. Different question.

by designerarvid

3/19/2026 at 9:44:01 PM

An emulator is not a reproduction of the thing it emulates.

by ErroneousBosh

3/19/2026 at 6:19:21 PM

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.

by lstodd

3/19/2026 at 8:42:40 PM

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.

by Cthulhu_

3/19/2026 at 6:25:46 PM

I really wonder who "Atari" is these days . . .

by kabdib

3/19/2026 at 8:40:58 PM

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.

by Cthulhu_

3/19/2026 at 6:05:28 PM

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.

by LoganDark

3/19/2026 at 6:23:10 PM

Pretty much this. No one was interested in playing corporate games, and Steam/GoG isn't that important anyway.

by lstodd

3/19/2026 at 6:04:19 PM

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.

by mhitza

3/19/2026 at 6:25:17 PM

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.

by maybewhenthesun

3/19/2026 at 6:18:10 PM

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.

by yellowapple

3/19/2026 at 6:23:09 PM

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.

by sho_hn

3/19/2026 at 8:28:03 PM

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.

by bombcar

3/20/2026 at 2:35:57 PM

This looks like one of the rare instances where a company tried to balance their commercial interests with the interest of the fans of their products. I don't see why people would be complaining?

by bluejay2387

3/19/2026 at 7:59:15 PM

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

by NietTim

3/20/2026 at 10:53:19 AM

Steam version of OpenTTD didn't make much sense to me, since I'm running JGRPP fork (https://github.com/JGRennison/OpenTTD-patches).

I wonder how many players won't be affected by its Steam disappearance.

Similar issue with other heavy modded games, such as Kerbal Space Program. The best way to handle multiple saves with different modpacks is multiple game installations, which is against the grain for the Steam version.

by ivanjermakov

3/19/2026 at 7:11:25 PM

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.

by jwitthuhn

3/19/2026 at 9:39:45 PM

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.

by freehorse

3/19/2026 at 7:20:59 PM

Indeed. It sounds like they were further pressured to say they were not being pressured.

by singpolyma3

3/19/2026 at 7:42:16 PM

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.

by JoshTriplett

3/19/2026 at 11:07:05 PM

I just can't believe that given the outcome and the wording of the posts from the project. If there was respect here there would have been no threats. If there were no threats there would be no talk of "balancing commercial interests"

by singpolyma3

3/19/2026 at 7:31:32 PM

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.

by IshKebab

3/19/2026 at 7:37:16 PM

How is "I haven't talked to my lawyer yet but you know I could" not a threat/pressure?

by singpolyma3

3/19/2026 at 8:06:32 PM

There is no reason to assume they said that and all the reason to assume they didn't say that.

by NietTim

3/19/2026 at 9:47:19 PM

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.

by IshKebab

3/19/2026 at 11:08:17 PM

"you kids can't skate here" is the threat part.

by singpolyma3

3/20/2026 at 1:11:30 PM

That's just stretching the definition of "threat" beyond its normal meaning.

If I tell my kids "it's bedtime" is that a threat?

by IshKebab

3/20/2026 at 1:29:03 PM

If they say "no" are you gonna let them stay up?

If not then it may not be a literal threat but it contains the implied threat

by singpolyma3

3/19/2026 at 9:03:59 PM

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.

by 1313ed01

3/19/2026 at 9:11:36 PM

Recent and related. Others?

Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381746 - March 2026 (131 comments)

by dang

3/20/2026 at 1:03:29 AM

I don't really get why you put 'Others?'

What kind of question is 'Others?' is doesn't even make any sense. It just pisses me off.

by 2postsperday

3/20/2026 at 2:23:13 AM

I'll happily explain it if you'll agree to stop making accounts to break HN's rules with.

(You're welcome here personally. We just want you to respect the intended use of the site.)

by dang

3/20/2026 at 7:20:33 AM

This feels like absolute best-case scenario for an open-source clone interacting with a rights holder looking to re-release the original. Really glad to see their willingness to work together, instead of just torpedoing the open-source project

by swiftcoder

3/19/2026 at 7:58:23 PM

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.

by mikkupikku

3/19/2026 at 9:16:00 PM

Wonder if the reaction would be the same if Wine was conditional on buying a license to Windows.

by halo

3/19/2026 at 11:06:27 PM

Wine is not a full reimplementation of Windows, so not an analogous situation.

by danparsonson

3/19/2026 at 9:24:17 PM

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).

by TobTobXX

3/19/2026 at 9:35:35 PM

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)

by rvnx

3/19/2026 at 10:47:18 PM

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?

by joemi

3/19/2026 at 10:10:20 PM

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

by samrus

3/19/2026 at 5:54:02 PM

> 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.

by Lammy

3/19/2026 at 6:01:08 PM

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.

by blizdiddy

3/19/2026 at 6:26:58 PM

> 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.

by maybewhenthesun

3/19/2026 at 7:58:39 PM

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?

by blizdiddy

3/19/2026 at 10:36:51 PM

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.

by maybewhenthesun

3/19/2026 at 8:29:57 PM

What you can imagine has very little to bear on what they can get away with without being legally shut down.

by AndrewDucker

3/19/2026 at 8:36:19 PM

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.

by passivegains

3/19/2026 at 7:28:11 PM

> 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.

by Aurornis

3/19/2026 at 8:12:33 PM

Who gives a shit? It's from 1995 and nu-Atari had nothing to do with it.

by Lammy

3/19/2026 at 8:27:51 PM

Copyright from 1995 has not expired.

by AndrewDucker

3/19/2026 at 8:30:37 PM

And now we have looped back around to my original comment. I'll give you a moment to scroll up and read it again.

by Lammy

3/19/2026 at 5:59:23 PM

Well, they shouldn't be entitled but they are entitled.

by Dylan16807

3/19/2026 at 7:41:04 PM

But it's not and we don't live in fantasy land. Your approach would have it shut down tomorrow.

by WarcrimeActual

3/19/2026 at 8:52:56 PM

In a world full of Nintendos, be Atari.

by c12

3/19/2026 at 6:02:46 PM

> 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.

by CivBase

3/19/2026 at 7:30:58 PM

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.

by calibas

3/19/2026 at 8:04:49 PM

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.

by NietTim

3/19/2026 at 6:06:20 PM

[dead]

by speefers

3/19/2026 at 7:28:03 PM

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.

by shevy-java

3/19/2026 at 9:08:06 PM

[dead]

by zeeshdev2887

3/19/2026 at 6:03:29 PM

Atari is releasing an inferior product and needs the superior community one delisted. The remaster cannot compete, simple as.

by junaru

3/19/2026 at 6:58:31 PM

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.

by ethanrutherford

3/19/2026 at 7:41:50 PM

[flagged]

by WarcrimeActual

3/19/2026 at 8:55:52 PM

> please be nice to Atari

You're not my mom...

by nubinetwork

3/19/2026 at 6:09:54 PM

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.

by maCDzP

3/19/2026 at 6:30:14 PM

Why would you when an open source version already exists?

by nemomarx

3/19/2026 at 8:41:55 PM

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.

by einr

3/19/2026 at 6:44:54 PM

So https://malus.sh/

Good luck with all that

by bigfishrunning

3/20/2026 at 8:42:07 AM

Is this service a joke? I'm not even sure after reading the reviews at the bottom there.

by k4rli

3/20/2026 at 8:36:00 PM

Haha yeah its a joke, but it sure is prophetic

by bigfishrunning