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).
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
> 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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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".
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
>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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
False. Look at https://osgameclones.com and projects like FreeDoom. You must be young and it shows how disconnected are the new generations on libre reimplementations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
That's why we need to reel in these platforms. The mobile ones are slowly starting to relent, but that's only the beginning.
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.
And what did you discover on hn? Let me show you https://www.oldunreal.com/ ;)
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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).
> Sriracha, Costco are brands you likely know that dont advertise
This was a Costco ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i5CQVfmx-0
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
Does it matter? People just look for the bottle with a rooster anyway.
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).
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.
Gaming feels dead to devs these days. But I know that's not what gamers care about.
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
> limited by no "platforms" but only by their own lack of desire.
Or Google's low ranking of their content
I don't even.
Relying on third-party ranking of whatever is a clear indicator of lack of effort.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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).
> 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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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
"no responsibility" but they could have chosen not to intentionally hurt them
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?
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".
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
>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.
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.
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.
> 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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
It's clearly exploitative
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.
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?
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).
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.
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?
Until the IP is flipped to another owner and the final squeeze begins. Gotta mirror this.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
Clean room reimplementations of software projects have been tested in court and are legally fine
False. Look at https://osgameclones.com and projects like FreeDoom. You must be young and it shows how disconnected are the new generations on libre reimplementations.
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.
Sony vs Bleem. They already lost this case in court.
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.
I think I'm even older than you, because I remember what Nintendo did to the Great Giana Sisters.
Good luck making an open source Pokemon game clone and see how it goes
- 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.
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.
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.
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?
I read somewhere that it's not a clean room rewrite but rather it started off as a reverse engineering.
Its not a clean ground-up rewrite. They dis-assembled the original binaries into assembly and started from there.
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)
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.
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.
Learn something new, dear GenZers:
https://osgameclones.com/
Maybe you all realize how much brainwashed from corporations yall actually are.
GenZ?
Look and Feel in computers and how it interacts with copyright is hardly something new
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v03/03HarvJL...
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.
> 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
Reproducing is absolutely not a copyright violation. Otherwise emulators would have no legal option to exist.
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.
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.
I really wonder who "Atari" is these days . . .
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.
Pretty much this. No one was interested in playing corporate games, and Steam/GoG isn't that important anyway.
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.
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.
How is "I haven't talked to my lawyer yet but you know I could" not a threat/pressure?
There is no reason to assume they said that and all the reason to assume they didn't say that.
Indeed. It sounds like they were further pressured to say they were not being pressured.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
Who gives a shit? It's from 1995.
> 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.
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?
Well, they shouldn't be entitled but they are entitled.
But it's not and we don't live in fantasy land. Your approach would have it shut down tomorrow.
Atari is releasing an inferior product and needs the superior community one delisted. The remaster cannot compete, simple as.
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.
This guy ended his thought with "simple as". He's not a smart man.
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.
Why would you when an open source version already exists?
So https://malus.sh/
Good luck with all that