This doesn't feel right for me. OpenTTD is so much superior in every way compared to the original TTD, that noone in their right mind would ever play the original. So Atari now, while spending zero effort compared to the years of work that OpenTTD devs put in, will basically sell OpenTTD as if was their own creation. People who buy the new TTD will simply play OpenTTD anyway, since it's so much better.
I might be wrong, but it feels like Atari are like parasites in this situation feeding off the hard work of OpenTTD devs.
Obviously having OpenTTD available for free on Steam would jeopardize Atari's paid rerelease of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, so I think this is a good compromise. Hopefully they rigged it up so the assets from Transport Tycoon Deluxe get picked up automatically by OpenTTD when you install the bundle. I also hope that Atari will be sharing some of the revenue from the bundle with the OpenTTD team as part of this arrangement. They've spent the last 20+ years adding nice quality of life features and keeping the game playable, and I think they deserve to be rewarded for that effort. Going back to stock TTD after playing OpenTTD feels like a massive downgrade, like going from vim to BSD vi.
Atari got a game I like called Awesomenauts and revived it from being shutdown F2P to $20. They paid an old dev to get it playable on a temporary contract. Though it has a few rough qualities I'm glad it's playable again.
What is the story with OpenGFX then? It sounds like OpenTTD is completely new codebase and OpenGFX (which I also helped with) is completely new graphics. Why does one have to pay for that?
If you like OpenTTD, you may want to try OpenTTD-JGRPP (JGRennison's Patch Pack). It has a bunch of additional QoL improvements and additional features. It was never distributed on Steam, so nothing has changed there.
In my opinion this is just another example of our broken copyright system. That copyright should have expired years ago, so no troll company which happens to resurrect Ataris corpse for the tenth time can pull stuff like this.
But the lobbyism is too strong for a reasonable 15 or 20 year copyright limit.
Atari? I never expected to see that ancient name again. If I remember correctly, I've been playing OpenTTD for more than a decade without the original TTD assets, and I usually build it from source, so this change won’t really affect me. Still, it feels a bit strange (even if it may be somewhat legitimate) to see Atari suddenly asserting rights over it.
Wade Rosen resurrected a failing Atari, but from multiple interviews it doesn't feel like he is really OK with emulation, as he often refers to the piracy part of this. I feel this was an action they as project did not have much say in, ... as they also clearly stay away from answering a why
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I might be wrong, but it feels like Atari are like parasites in this situation feeding off the hard work of OpenTTD devs.
TTD and OpenTTD do not which incentivizes mechanisms to dump everyone at the edge of the map.
Aside from that they're both transport games with bad UIs.
https://github.com/JGRennison/OpenTTD-patches
But the lobbyism is too strong for a reasonable 15 or 20 year copyright limit.
There is even an Android version with the same very much not touch friendly (but somewhat customizable) UI.