Who knows, though I always thought that it was rather odd that OpenTTD was on Steam. I'm not sure whether that's because it is an open source remake or because you had to own the original for the graphics/sound assets back in the day. (Apparently that changed over 15 years ago!)
Even if Atari's lawyers were involved, it may have been a friendly exchange. The post claims that OpenTTD was available on Steam for 5 years. That is more than enough time for them to apply legal pressure. It's also worth noting that the open source version is still available from the project website, as are the open assets.
As someone who has been involved in OpenRCT2, which is another Chris Sawyer/Atari game, from what I can tell, Atari has a very hands off approach to these things.
We know they know about us - We saw their Head of PR giving away keys for RCT2 on Twitch while playing OpenRCT2, prior to the release of RCT World (What a terrible game sadly).
As far as we can tell, it's basically a "don't cause us problems and we won't bother you" situation.
> As far as we can tell, it's basically a "don't cause us problems and we won't bother you" situation.
In this case, the "problem" seems to be "we want to lazily cash in on an existing IP and you providing a better product for free on the same shelves as ours makes that difficult", with the "solution" being to agree to have the better (free) version bundled with the lesser (paid) version.
I suppose it's better than banning distribution of prebuilt executables outside Steam or suing the devs into bankruptcy (a lawsuit Atari would likely win), but at that point we're just comparing starting with a shakedown to starting with breaking kneecaps.
> In this case, the "problem" seems to be "we want to lazily cash in on an existing IP and you providing a better product for free on the same shelves as ours makes that difficult", with the "solution" being to agree to have the better (free) version bundled with the lesser (paid) version.
At least they want to "lazily cash in". A lot of gamers like to talk about preserving history, yet are critical the moment businesses preserve that history doing it the way businesses naturally do things (i.e. by selling a product).
Besides, we do not know what went on behind the scenes here. It could be anything from the open source developers voluntarily pulling their game from the store, to the publisher requesting they pull their game from the store, to the publisher threatening legal action. Heck, the publisher may have even paid the developers of OpenTTD to bundle their engine with TTD. While some scenarios are more likely than others, we are too quick to attribute actions and motivations based upon non-existent information.
I don't think anybody is blaming Atari for putting TTD on sale for money. Heck, I was even planning to buy it until they pulled the obnoxious stunt of removing OpenTTD.
And even that could've been okay if they actually explained what was going on, but it's all very hush hush, which does not instill trust and understanding. If they were transparent about motivations and reasoning, they'd likely catch a lot less flak for what's going on right now.
The original one at home came with a PC gaming magazine, but sadly I lost that CD. Also if any I'd pay $5 for the OpenTTD authors and another $5 for the original creators.
I remember reading an interview some years ago where they basically said they wouldn't try to shut them down, but they also did not appreciate the projects existing.
If I recall that correctly, Atari didn't want to do anything about it because it drives sales for TTD and RCT (in the case of OpenRCT2, it drives sales for 2 games even, since you need the assets from 2, and can also import more assets from 1, and even further, you can also use Classic as your base, so like, many many options), while Chris Sawyer didn't particularly like their existence, but not enough to go and force Atari to do anything about it.
