I'm of the opinion that making a statement this late was a bad move on Sam's part. Usually if you want something to die off completely, you'll make as little noise about it as possible...

Anyway, I want to give my piece when it comes to artists who deal in furry/fetish material. I personally hail from the same weird lands as Sam. I take commissions, I have a personal character that I love to death, commune with other like-interested individuals. Granted, I'm not friends with Sam directly as I have my own circle of friends under one umbrella which is under an even bigger umbrella that is furry, but I know of him, and have done business with him in the past.

Ok, story time. Rewind several months.

There was this one furry convention called "Rainfurrest". I had been an attendee for several years, and did enjoy each visit though I started noticing the decline in the quality of attendees. Each year, they'd get a little more rowdy, a little too "open" with their fetish material to the point of being intrusive to non-furry hotel goers. Several families left complains with the front desk and now thanks to a few bad eggs who misrepresented a small cluster of people, the con is discontinued. I can't speak for everyone who as there, but I can personally say I was embarrassed to be associated with that type of behavior.

As a furry, and one of the same similar subtext, you can see why one would be a little upset as to how this whole SoSorry business is being handled. It's kindof an unwritten rule not to openly push your personal fetish fursona out in public space. It's like throwing the end of a fuse out there for anyone to light. Much of the time, an artist like myself will go out of their way to create a whole new character, one without a history tied to it, with it's only link being back to the original artist, if even that at all.

I just find it disappointing that Sam feels he wasn't entirely to blame for this kerfuffle, having the option to use something else and being surprised a weird fetish(s) he hides got mined by association. It paints the rest of us 'wierdos' in a bad light, much like those few rascals at Rainfurrest ruined the convention for everyone. I think most of our kind of people should have better foresight, a lil' more tact. Sure, it's not blatantly on the forefront of SoSorry, but a little research can turn up some nose-scrunching results and making something as great as Undertale be associated with some dark reaching questionables is irresponsible.

tl;dr Mistakes were made, you opened your fetishes up to a huge population of people knowing the background of your character prior, I don't think there's any wiggle room so he's stuck in this bed he made, might as well sleep in it and try and let it die, imho.