[PhantomShiba]

I am working on a Klonoa Fangame under the title Klonoa: Whispers from the Wind. I looked through Bandai Namco's site and I am still kinda unsure, would releasing a Klonoa fangame be illegal due to copyright infringement, IP, and other forms of licensing. I don't wanna go through more legal stuff of Namco's website so I'm just asking here and I didn't really know where else to post this.  It seems like Namco isn't too supportive of fangames but I wanna double check. If it isn't legal I'll see if I could contact them but it's unlikely they'd respond    Thank you! 

[ThatGuy70 (Mikey)]

Okay, so as a rule of thumb, as of now, any and all fanwork that uses existing IP is illegal. But there's others who were working on Klonoa fan games and I don't think they ever encountered any trouble. And there's a whole slew of Klonoa fan music that was never touched by Namco either, so you should be fine. Companies can be lax about properties

[rapappa the pepper]

I think you can release a fan game, if you don't profit out of it at all. I mean i have the guts to start working on a fan game... Uhhh... Also this ain't Nintendo y'know... And, Namco even at one point hosted a thing with fan games!

[ThatGuy70 (Mikey)]

Oh my god Nintendo WHAT!? Nintendo supporting fanwork literally sounds like blasphemy

But it wouldn't hurt if they did it more often

[SummerShores]

Okay, so as a rule of thumb, as of now, any and all fanwork that uses existing IP is illegal. But there's others who were working on Klonoa fan games and I don't think they ever encountered any trouble. And there's a whole slew of Klonoa fan music that was never touched by Namco either, so you should be fine. Companies can be lax about properties

This is more or less how I see the situation - most companies don't seem to really care about fangames unless they're for-profit. (There have been exceptions, of course, but in Klonoa's case Namco isn't likely to pursue legal action.)

[PhantomShiba]

This is more or less how I see the situation - most companies don't seem to really care about fangames unless they're for-profit. (There have been exceptions, of course, but in Klonoa's case Namco isn't likely to pursue legal action.)

It's nice to see companies be less cut-throat with stuff like this. Last I checked Nintendo has been a lil less strict with their music takedowns and with taking down fan-games and projects. I've been seeing this in other companies too and it's quite refreshing to see 

[RAYDEN]

I've once been told by a software professor to NEVER develop a fangame or a related unauthorized project. Still, as long as it's not something you intend to monetize in any way, I think you should be in an OK moral standing. Plus it is still a pretty good learning experience from a gamedev perspective.