Open source RTS game Beyond All Reason signs publishing deal with Hooded Horse

With a Steam release planned for the open source RTS game Beyond All Reason, they've signed on with publisher Hooded Horse to help fund further development.

Beyond All Reason has an interesting history behind it. Originally born from the open source SpringRTS Engine into their own highly advanced fork - they've continued working to create something quite impressive. SpringRTS itself started off life as a 3D conversion of the absolute classic game Total Annihilation, and eventually became much more than that with many unique games and mods. The team behind Beyond All Reason plan to bring the game to Steam with a full single-player campaign, and this is why they needed a publisher.

As part of the deal the code remains open source, the BAR team keep all IP rights to it, and they said the contract they signed has safety provisions included so if the partnership ends for any reason, the free version will just continue on as normal.

How will the deal work since the game is currently free and open source? The entire multiplayer side of it as it exists now will stay exactly as it is with no expected changes. People will be able to go and download it directly as you can do right now. The funding from publishing and revenue from eventual Steam sales they said will go directly back into further enhancements. It's just that the paid side of it on Steam will just include the fancy single-player experience.

In summary:

• BAR has signed a publishing deal with Hooded Horse (Manor Lords, Old World, Terra Invicta, Against the Storm etc.).
• The multiplayer content stays free forever. Available via the BAR website launcher as it is today. Nothing currently free becomes paid.
• BAR will also have a paid Premium Edition on Steam, with a proper single-player campaign as the headline feature alongside the same multiplayer with feature parity to the website version.
• The IP stays with the BAR team. The code stays GPL (opensource). Safety provisions are built into the contract for the project to continue whatever happens.
• The funding lets us hire full-time team members to finally tackle the work that volunteer time could not realistically reach, putting a proper Steam release on a realistic timeline.
• The contributor team was consulted thoroughly throughout this process and gave us a clear mandate to proceed.

See their full news post for all the info.

Overall this seems like really good news. It enables the BAR team to actually have enough resources to finally do a proper full Steam release and expand the audience. I'm always keen for more grand-scale RTS games like this and their current version is already pretty great.