Beyond All Reason Signs With Hooded Horse for Steam Release
The team behind Beyond All Reason (BAR), the high-profile open-source RTS, has announced a new publishing partnership with Hooded Horse. The deal is designed to fund further development and bring the title to Steam, putting the project on a formal timeline for a full release.
- Publisher: Hooded Horse
- Core Status: Remains open source (GPL)
- Pricing: Multiplayer stays free; Premium Edition with campaign coming to Steam
- IP Rights: Retained by the Beyond All Reason team
What This Means for Players
For the existing community, the developers have emphasized that nothing currently free will move behind a paywall. The multiplayer experience, which has been the project's focus to date, will maintain full feature parity between the website version and the upcoming Steam version. The team notes that the funding provided by Hooded Horse will allow them to bring on full-time staff to handle development tasks that were previously limited by the constraints of volunteer time.
Protecting the Open-Source Roots
Despite the commercial publishing arrangement, the BAR team has confirmed that they have built safety provisions into the contract. If the partnership were to end, the free, open-source version of the game is guaranteed to continue operating as it does now. The project will continue to be governed by its GPL license, and the team maintains full control over their intellectual property.
The addition of a paid "Premium Edition" on Steam is intended to provide resources for a full single-player campaign—a feature the team previously lacked the capacity to implement. Hooded Horse, known for titles like Manor Lords, Terra Invicta, and Against the Storm, will handle the publishing duties, while the BAR team continues their work on the game's engine, which traces its lineage back to the SpringRTS engine and the classic Total Annihilation.
The decision to move forward with the deal was made after consultation with the project's contributors, who provided a clear mandate to proceed with the Steam release. Further details regarding the development timeline and the campaign content are expected to follow as the team utilizes their new resources to scale up production.