Following some controversial recent changes to the Steam and GOG releases of open-source sim project OpenTTD, the game's developers have revealed that Transport Tycoon Deluxe owner Atari is helping to pay for their upkeep costs.
In a news post on the OpenTTD website, developer Owen Rudge says that as part of the discussions between his team and Atari, the latter "agreed to make a contribution towards the running costs" of the project's server infrastructure.
In case you need context, Atari recently re-released Transport Tycoon Deluxe, the game on which OpenTTD is based, which led to discussions between the project's devs and Atari. Those discussions subsequently resulted in OpenTTD dropping its free GOG and Steam versions for those who don't own Atari's game.
At time of writing, you can still download OpenTTD for free from the project's official website, but if you want to play the open-source version of the game on Steam or GOG, you'll need to buy Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
Rudge says that the OpenTTD team wasn't pressured by Atari to make any of the changes, and that Atari is "entitled to pursue" its "commercial interests", seeing as it's the holder of the rights to Transport...
