Read this Before Making ANY "Fan Game"

I say this out of love so please hear me out.

Publishing a fan game is not legal. "But it's free. I'm not charging players to play it." still illegal. For some reason, everyone making a fan game thinks that copyright doesn't apply to them because they're selling it for $0 a copy. It does. It 1000% applies to you. Making it free-to-play has zero consequence on how illegal it is.I say 'publish' not 'make' because you can make whatever you want, it's the distributing of it that breaks copyright.

The only way you can publish a game using the intellectual property, title, assets, etc of an existing game (or anything else that already exists) is with the express permission of the owners. You cannot publish a Spongebob game. You cannot publish a Pokemon fan game, and you sure can't use the name "Pokémon" in the title. You cannot take an artwork/character/meme and include it in a game unless you are authorized to do so by the creator or the license holder, or the content's license itself (Public Domain, Creative Commons, MIT, etc). Technically, yes, some works are licensed under a 'Non-Commercial' license so publishing a free-to-play fan game would be allowed whilst publishing a paid game would not be. I promise you, this is definitely (probably) not the case for whatever you're trying to make a fan game of. P.S. Copyleft licenses are super evil. Stop using them.

Most/Every video game ever made is heavily influenced and based off of other games and IP. We would not have 7 Days to Die without Minecraft. We would not have Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program without Factorio. We would not have 50-trillion Vampire Survivors-like games without Vampire Survivors. We would not have Stardew Valley without Harvest Moon.

You absolutely can make a game based on a game you love and share it and make money off of it. You cannot steal characters, titles, assets, or other IP to make your game, even if it's a free game.

I say all of this because I keep seeing people or groups of people spending months, years, decades even making a game that imminently gets taken down and banned because it is a fan game that breaks copyright. Imagine that. Imagine spending years making a game, all for nothing. Don't do it. If you want to do it, get permission first. Don't make it and then ask for permission. Don't make it and then find out the hard way that it was a complete waste and also you're being sued.

Pokemon Uranium. 2 devs, plus beta testers, artists, spriters, and musicians. 9 years in development. Shut down within 1 week of being released. "We had to essentially abandon our life's greatest work." "What do you do when you dedicate years of your life to a project, finally release it to widespread acclaim, and then are forced to abandon it?". Then again, it sounds like Oripoke/Twitch is making another pokemon fan game so... the find it to be worth the trouble somehow.I'm sure Pokemon Uranium s a great game and I would love to try it, and Oripoke said that "taking out all the Pokémon assets and re-branding it as an original work for sale was not an option", but please take my original advice and just make an "original" game, like Digimon. That way 1. everyone can enjoy your work without downloading viruses from sites claiming to be peddling the forbidden spicy (radioactive isotope) pokemon game 2. you can monetize it 3. you don't get sued. It's like all of the perks and non of the drawbacks of stealing copyrighted works. The only price is the pokeballs can't look like pokeballs and be called that and the title would have to be "A Legal Knockoff Uranium".

Please, please, please: if you see anyone in this subreddit or anywhere else asking about or talking about making a fan game, please inform them that "but I won't charge money for it" is a different way of saying "Why yes, I will spend months/years of my life working on a game that will never see the light of day." and "Free for the users, maybe a lot of money in lawyer fees and getting sued for the dev."

Actually, you can get away with it a little. Pokemon Uranium had 1.5 million downloads before it was taken down and I'm sure you can still find places to download it.

edit: see https://www.engadget.com/2016-09-05-nintendo-issues-dmca-takedown-for-hundreds-of-fan-games.html