OpenTTD developer Owen Rudge says “Atari have worked collaboratively with us,” and it also put up some cash to help cover the game’s server costs.
OpenTTD developer Owen Rudge says “Atari have worked collaboratively with us,” and it also put up some cash to help cover the game’s server costs.
Does Atari have any legal leg to stand on? My only guess as to why they’d have any legal right to force OpenTTD off of Steam is that OpenTTD still uses original Transport Tycoon graphics and/or text, or at least a derivative work thereof. It doesn’t seem like OpenTTD copied any of Transport Tycoon’s code, so it must be other stuff like graphics or text.
The legal system “works” like this: if you have enough lawyers that sends enough mail with fancy letter head, you can do whatever the fuck you want.
I’m also confused about this.
Am I missing something? Just checked on the website, and OpenTTD doesn’t include original TTD’s assets — they can be added separately by the user. So OpenTTD should be impervious to any claims of copyright infringement, and in fact it had to be from the start, otherwise it couldn’t be licensed under GPL or any other open-source license
P.S. Although, come to think of it, I never delved into the legality of reverse engineering, and apparently the US law is not too permissive: the EULA overrides the default assumption that it’s okay, and many programs’ licenses have stock language forbidding reverse engineering. Idk about TTD specifically.
Yeah, it’s possible OpenTTD is only scared of Atari on the basis that OpenTTD doesn’t have the resources to fight even a completely spurious case.
Edit: Someone in another thread suggested it might be that the OpenTTD folks are in breach of EULA provisions prohibiting reverse engineering and that might be what legal justification Atari would have if they did bring this to court.