We all know the story, so many passion projects are taken down by companies and most commonly not even for reasons that make much sense.
Most recently I saw, portal 64 taken down by valve, you have to own portal, made for a dead old console.
Thats just one of many examples, which leads me to the actual question, why be under the very common threat of an uncaring ruthless company like this instead of creating something new? Or a company that doesn’t openly kick people in their butt? ( Nintendo being so prone that valve didnt even wanna bother)
Part of it might be that the fun of it for them is creating it. Additionally it might just be a fun way to learn a certain technology.
A small part of me is interested in making an nes game, and the first step for me to learn that code would be to work on a fan project and improve existing code.