Not all people want to be paid for a hobby project, and not all game communities prefer having more "game features" with corpo backing. I am not saying one is better or worse, more moral or less, nor what is the case here, but it is not clear to me why this is a scenario that either the devs or the community prefer, as it was presented as "what atari should have done". I understand why many indie devs want to be paid for their indie games, but I don't want to assume that is the case for everybody with a hobby project.
Well, yes. My main point was still about what Atari should have done. Atari buying rights to TTD is not guaranteed to be good for dev or community. But nonetheless, Atari should be trying to be doing something good for the community, good enough that they will pay it money so it can earn back its investment. That's how business should work, in a reasonable world: you create value for other people so they give you money.
