Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27524978-20160210030742/@comment-28032544-20160322210207

Painocus wrote:In principle; why not? People have put a lot of work into fangames before; Starry Expanse and Mother 4 have been in the works for years, and as far as fan-works go Alan Moore has been writing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a cross-over fan-comic, since 1999.

And even if Sans was intended to be Ness, that would still just be a small part of the game that is ultimately irrelevant to everything else, like Toby made Varik the main character of that Earthbound hack even though nothing that goes on in the game has anything to do with Brandish. There's a huge difference between his hack and this game, however. Anyone who does anything with game/hack programming, as well as people  who record videos for youtube, all these people know just how problematic Nintendo is with their copyrighted stuff. The hack wasn't made with the intention to earn money, and Nintendo probably didn't care to mess with him back then, but if it becomes canon that Sans is actually Ness, Toby Fox will likely be very screwed. Again, why would he risk that over a game he put so much of himself into?

Not to say other fan games aren't made by dedicated people, but people can't sell them and live off fan games (they can sometimes, but again, this is Nintendo). People who make hacks are well aware they're dedicating their time for free, and paying off their pockets to pay homage to the games they enjoy (or even using a pre-existant sandbox to learn how to make a compelling game of their own, like Toby Fox did, and fanfiction authors do with books). But this isn't the case here, Toby Fox likely hopes to make a job as a game developer, and he won't be able to get money to survive if Nintendo decides he's violating their copyright/whatever else and cracks down on him.

Which is why I find this theory very unlikely, and he will probably find ways to deny it as time goes.