Hello, a friend wants to write a game about Star Wars. I would like to know how legal it would be to do so, considering all the copyright issues. Just for reference, in this story, all the names of the characters are original creations, except for a few who have the surname of some other characters, and there are sporadic mentions of characters, but very few (the planets and locations are taken from the original story).
Sorry if it’s not the correct tag, thank you!!
That would basically be fanfiction. Fanfiction is generally only a problem if you try to make money off it. So your friend could write the game and make it available to play for free, but couldn’t publish it through Hosted Games or otherwise monetize it.
Thanks!!
Yeah considering there’s tons of interactive fanfiction out there this is no problem. FF.Net had an apparent ban on CYOA stuff once but this was only due to them not understanding the difference between CYOAs and Reader Inserts. So you’re good.
I’d be baffled how anyone could possibly make that mistake, but I know first-hand how… special ff.net can be. So it all checks out.
They read it weirdly as ‘well if a CYOA (or what we define one as) has adult choices in the second person and the reader is underage we are making a underaged reader have sexual content happening to them, so we will ban ALL kinds of CYOA just in case’. Honestly everyone knows they really mean reader inserts (which seem to be perfectly fine despite having the same issues in theory) and so it’s ignored by virtually everyone. 
This reminds me of a post some months back about which genre is most popular and of course they’re many sub genres I couldn’t write it down my thoughts then, but this answer kinda applies in both scenarios… Your friend could draw inspiration from the franchise then bunch off… minus the copyright stuff… Just don’t overthink it, it’s just a rough draft… let’s call it a guide to center ones thoughts. Imagine dune meets star wars both sci-fi with a more archaic feel to it…
Which reminds me they was this wip I’ve been meaning to play so it’s about two kingdoms at war one of magicians the other warriors RO I can only remember the one the mage Queen 
, playthrough when choosing to play the mage I guess your super powerful and you start off in a complicated relationship with the queen so that’s a plus 
… (I guess IDK cause I’ve always choose to play the warrior ) as for the warriors your parents are a throuple and the mage Queen is hellbent on destroying you… So that sucks 
oh and your able to augment and enhance your abilities… So Bro if anyone sees this I just need the name of the wip 