i mean its cool that they made the original playable but having to get an ancient game alongside the one you actually wanna play is stupid
Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
101–110 of 136 posts
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#102[flagged]
Isn't it just releasing binary builds? Lots of open source projects share binaries and code. What is the tension around freedom? The awkward part I wonder about is deciding which maintainer is authority over third-party distribution and who has control of the steam page.
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#103I think this is the correct move and I hope the OpenTTD community gets a cut of the sales and was not just bullied to agree
In order to play OpenTTD you needed the original assets. Now they are bundled
People already having the assets were most likely always technical enough to get the OpenTTD builds
Only casual users would discover OpenTTD on stream to be frustrated by not being able to play it without an additional purchase
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steam is really good about that kind of thing. Not quite the same, but I have a couple of games on my account that haven't been sold on the store for years, and I can still download them any time. I don't think there's any way for publishers to really remove a game that's already been purchased.
You're correct. It's part of the Steam Publisher Agreement that basically, you can't remove your game from users who have paid for it. And if you push an update that deletes the files, Valve can, will, and has rolled back the update. Of course, there's also situations where Valve has assisted in removing titles at developers request, but it was a situation Valve was involved in - Specifically, a game called "The Ship…
Steam deleted my perfectly working Arma3 2.x for Linux with no option to return it back, so I stopped to use Steam.
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Atari didn't put in the effort, but Chris Sawyer did. Now Atari paid Sawyer for the rights to the game. I do not think Atari is a parasite here just because they paid for the game instead of creating it. It seems to me that the logical outcome of your interpretation is that Sawyer's leniency towards the OpenTTD devs would be punished by losing exclusivity to his IP. Essentially, you are asserting "squatter's rights"…
What "leniency"? It's not like OpenTTD contains any TTD IP
that would require some confirmation from a court
the standards for originality changed substantially twice in the timeframe we are talking about (recently, in 2023, the Supreme Court made it more strict, reversing a ruling from the 90s)
but still, what counts as sufficiently transformative is a very complicated question, especially when it comes to this kind of thematically identical but still creatively innovative derivative works
I remember how many years artists spent on the NewGRF packs, to make them high definition, what to add, what to keep, what to reimagine, and how! and of course the same goes for the game mechanics, the UI, the ... pathfinding, the economics (prices for freight, but also now there's a supply and demand system too, right?)
but the original behavior is still kept, so that's more clearly derivative (a copy), and in this case the new additions might be a new original work on their own, but still for OpenTTD to be able to be distributed without infringement of the original TTD it either needs to license that work for redistribution or remove the infringing parts.
(and of course it's a layman's analysis, so ...)
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#106This 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 wro…
The downsides of putting “TTD” in the name “OpenTTD” is a certain level of vulnerability to the original creator (or a rights inheritor) deciding it’s worth their time to care again someday. I suspect this will do more for the TTD community than it will harm it, though; any modern sale of TTD is targeted precisely at the folks who would take mortal offense at harm to OpenTTD, and $10 (which would have been merely $5…
> It’s also now in line with the various WAD and Descent games over time that used this model, where the engine is maximum rewrite amazing but the game resources require a GOG purchase.
I don't know about Descent, but this hasn't been true wrt Doom for decades: https://freedoom.github.io/about.html
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
My issue with this argument is that I'm not sure how much of OpenTTD is their IP. OpenTTD has been development for so long that I doubt that any original disassembly remnants remain in the latest version of OpenTTD. The only true piece of IP that OpenTTD may use is the name (the TTD part of OpenTTD) and the graphics, the latter of which being the more important one. However, as far as I know, OpenTTD devs have create…
If you take an essay, and rewrite every paragraph and also add some new words, then it's still plagiarism. Perhaps not under copyright law, but ethically. OpenTTD goes beyond "heavily inspired" because it is intended to reimplement the original game. I am sympathetic to arguments of the form "It was abandonware," "Copyright lasts for too long anyways," etc. But I don't think you can claim OpenTTD owes nothing to the…
It's not plagiarism when you openly credit the original.
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#108I think this is the correct move and I hope the OpenTTD community gets a cut of the sales and was not just bullied to agree In order to play OpenTTD you needed the original assets. Now they are bundled People already having the assets were most likely always technical enough to get the OpenTTD builds Only casual users would discover OpenTTD on stream to be frustrated by not being able to play it without an additional…
Version where don't need original assets to play OpenTTD was released 16 years ago.
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you feel about old Lucas arts adventure games that are purchasable on gog and other platforms and come bundled with scummvm?
I see no issue with it. The same way I see no issue selling old DOS games packaged with DOSBox. Neither ScummVM nor DOSBox are games themselves. In this case it's the content that matters. However in OpenTTDs case, the entire implementation is original (including the new high res assets). I would have 0 issues with this TTD/OpenTTD situation if OpenTTD was left on Steam as-is and TTD was a separate purchase that gran…
unfortunately it's not that simple, especially as long as the original behavior is still in there
and ... successfully defending the originality of the reimplementation as a standalone work would be a risky and costly legal endeavor
(even though the standards for originality - "is it transformative enough?" was more lenient when OpenTTD was made than it's today)
Re: Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam
#110Obviously 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 arrangeme…
I have nothing to base this on other than "it makes sense", but it seems like there has to be some form of revenue sharing here. OpenTTD is the reason why atari can even think this rerelease would work. I'm not saying there wouldn't be interest, but that I don't think any of the suits at atari would think to do this without OpenTTD keeping the interest there.
why do you think a revenue sharing is more likely than Atari simply pushing around the volunteer project (and the OpenTTD project simply not risking any kind of legal conflict)?