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A comment on Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam. Parent comment

Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by altairprime on Saturday March 14, 2026 @07:13PM (#47382317)
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 in 2000) is the opposite of egregious after 100% inflation pushed AAA games towards $90 these days. I paid $5 for a used copy of SimTower back then, I would happily pay the same today for TTD resources, so this is all fine.

I get that Atari isn’t perhaps as loved as, say, Bullfrog or Dynamix, but better that companies respect their properties and their fans with an outcome like this, than be another boringly-common community-destroying Nintendo Lawyer Takedown Club.

(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. The point of rewrites isn’t to deprive the games of revenue!)

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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by Chaosvex on Saturday March 14, 2026 @11:15PM (#47383945)
It's similar to Valve and Dota2. We all know what it means but officially, it isn't actually DotA and doesn't stand for anything. They will never refer to the game as Defense of the Ancients. Seems to have worked for them.

Worth noting that the Atari of today is a shell corporation that has precisely zero to do with the original.

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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by larsiusprime on Sunday March 15, 2026 @12:18AM (#47384318)
IceFrog was on the Dota2 team, and valve owns the trademark
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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by Chaosvex on Sunday March 15, 2026 @01:04AM (#47384528)
It's far more complicated than that and ended up in court. They own the commercial rights after a legal battle with Blizzard (and Riot was in the fray, somewhere), who retained some rights to the name. Valve's 'Dota' doesn't legally stand for anything because it'd be a direct reference to Warcraft 3 (Ancients), just as TTD can be said to not legally stand for Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

That's the entire point that you've simultaneously acknowledged and missed.

IceFrog didn't start DotA, either. He had no claim to the name.

TL;DR there's complicated history behind it and much money was spent arguing over it.

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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by literallywho on Monday March 16, 2026 @06:13AM (#47397122)
IIRCC, Eul, the guy who made Dota originally, also works at Valve.
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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by chocochunks on Sunday March 15, 2026 @08:25AM (#47386730)
It's also worth noting that the original TTD had nothing to do with the original Atari and a lot more to do with Microprose which was purchased by Hasbro Interactive, which was later purchased by Infogrames which renamed itself Atari after buying the remnants. Oh, and the "new" Microprose has even less to do with the old Microprose than the new Atari does with the old Atari (at least they own the rights to all the old Atari titles).
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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by int_19h on Sunday March 15, 2026 @05:17AM (#47385629)
> 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

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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by altairprime on Sunday March 15, 2026 @10:43AM (#47387868)
FreeDoom, like OpenTTD, walks a fine line between ‘artistic reimplementation’ and ‘legally vulnerable’ due precisely to reimplementing art assets, yes.
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Re:Changes to OpenTTD Distribution on Steam by mastax on Sunday March 15, 2026 @01:48PM (#47389840)
The modern Atari has no relation to the original Atari. They’re essentially copyright trolls. I do not believe we owe them any moral obligation for the works they bought from the original Atari via a series of many intermediaries.
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