OpenTTD and the Transport Tycoon re-release

Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD) has re-released on Steam and GOG after being abandonware for 25 years. Whilst it’s great that you can now legally buy the game, OpenTTD is no longer available for free on Steam. I can only see this as a cash grab by an investment holding company.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe and OpenTTD #

Transport Tycoon is a 1994 game about managing a transportation company across road, rail, air, and sea. Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTD) is an enhanced version of Transport Tycoon with additional features. The game was released for MS-DOS and Windows 95/98. Since Windows 2000, it has not been available to play on a modern operating system^{footnote 1}.

OpenTTD is a fan-made open-source re-implementation of Transport Tycoon Deluxe released in 2004. It’s available natively for a wide variety of platforms. It contains many bug fixes and additional features^{footnote 2} over the original game, whilst remaining faithful to the original gameplay.

I’ve spent an uncountable number of hours playing OpenTTD in the last 15 years. It’s free to play and endlessly addictive, especially if you have a certain kind of brain. OpenTTD trains are especially fun; you can build out train networks with signalling and dynamic pathing on a large scale.

In 2024, the rights to Transport Tycoon were purchased by a French holding company called Atari SA^{footnote 3footnote 4}. This holding company is not the original Atari from the 70s-80s, but has bought the rights to the Atari brand name. Atari SA was formerly called Infogrames.

In March 2026, Atari SA re-released Transport Tycoon Deluxe on Steam and GOG. OpenTTD is no longer available for free on Steam. Due to an agreement behind closed doors between the OpenTTD developers and Atari SA, new players will now need to purchase TTD to play OpenTTD on Steam or GOG^{footnote 5}. Users who already have OpenTTD in their library will not need to buy TTD. OpenTTD remains free when downloaded from the official website or a package manager.

My take #

Whilst OpenTTD does not contain any code or assets from the original game, it may have been created by decompiling and reverse engineering the original game^{footnote 6}. OpenTTD is also, at its core, a 1:1 recreation of TTD, which can in itself be copyright infringement^{footnote 7}. These problems may result in OpenTTD’s copyright being compromised. If this is the case, the new intellectual property owners of TTD would be in their legal rights to take action against the developers of OpenTTD - to seek monetary damages, to cease development, and to remove it from existence.

The terms of the arrangement between OpenTTD and Atari SA are not public. But, hopefully, as part of this agreement Atari SA has granted OpenTTD indefinite permission to continue development. Requiring users to buy the original game on Steam and GOG is a preferable compromise to keep OpenTTD alive. It’s important that the terms of this are irrevocable so that Atari SA can’t just rugpull if their TTD bundle proves to be unprofitable.

However, just because something is legal does not mean it is ethical. Atari SA may be within their rights legally, but I see this situation as unethical. They did not develop TTD; they simply bought the rights to a game that was abandoned and forgotten for 25 years. OpenTTD is the only reason why TTD is still relevant today. Without it, TTD would have died with the release of Windows 2000. The rights holders are attempting to benefit from 22 years of unpaid volunteer labour for a game they did not create.

Whilst the terms of the arrangement are not public, it appears that OpenTTD doesn’t receive a penny from purchases of TTD. Buying the bundle does not support the development of OpenTTD. Update: Atari SA are contributing to OpenTTD’s infrastructure costs^{footnote 8}.

The re-release of TTD is just an emulator wrapping the DOS game. This isn’t even an actual port, remastering, or update of any kind! I would have had a more favourable opinion if they had put any meaningful effort into this re-release, to port it to modern systems or fix bugs that have been fixed for decades in TTDPatch and OpenTTD.

What should they have done? #

By requiring the purchase of TTD to play OpenTTD on Steam, the rights holders are attempting to capitalise on 22 years of unpaid labour. Instead, I think they should have kept TTD as a completely separate purchase. They could allow players to purchase the original TTD graphics to use with OpenTTD. This way, there is a benefit to buying TTD for OpenTTD, there’s an actual value-add. This would have been received more favourably by the community.

There’s also a lot of room to create new titles using this IP. Technology has moved on a lot since 1994. Imagine a modern transport tycoon game that expands on the original but makes use of improved hardware. There’s certainly appetite for it, look at the success of Transport Fever.

Conclusion #

I see this as a cash grab by an investment holding company to benefit from 22 years of unpaid labour.

This is ultimately a problem with copyright law. I think that copyright lasts far too long; the copyright for the original game should have expired sometime in the 25 years when it was abandoned and not available for purchase for a modern platform.

I feel for the OpenTTD developers. This is a pretty awkward situation to be in and I don’t blame them at all for the agreement they’ve reached with Atari SA. I hope that the agreement places OpenTTD in a much better legal situation and allows it to continue for many years to come.

I am not a lawyer. There may be inaccuracies in this post, take it as opinion rather than fact.

Update: Announcement by OpenTTD #

OpenTTD has posted an update to clarify the situation. I think the fact that Atari is contributing to infrastructure is positive. It would be nice to see them also support development. Otherwise, nothing here is too surprising, I feel like my take was pretty spot on and avoided misinformation.

Our initial announcement perhaps didn’t provide as much detail as we could have, but I want to reassure OpenTTD fans that 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. They are keen to work with us, and hope that the new release will be welcomed by the community who have been playing OpenTTD for the past 20+ years. We discussed these plans, and we understood that a compromise would be needed to balance Atari’s commercial interests (which of course they are entitled to pursue as the rights holder) against the availability of a free, well-developed evolution of the game.

It’s great to hear that this was a collaborative affair rather than legal threats. However, there’s still the implicit pressure here on OpenTTD of copyright and legal issues, which leads me to say that the quotes around “pressured” are doing a lot of work here.

I was disappointed that this post didn’t contain any information about the legal situation now. Did Atari SA grant irrevocable indefinite permission to continue development? What happens if Atari SA comes out with a developed alternative and decides that OpenTTD should no longer exist?

Ultimately, my problem here is not with OpenTTD’s developers or the compromise they reached. It’s a reasonable and fair compromise given the situation. My problem is with copyright law around abandonware, and how it feels like Atari SA is extracting value from the unpaid open source labour that kept the game alive when the rights holders forgot about it for 25 years.