Of course, the larger issue was one of feeling unappreciated and creating confusion among consumers. Ina long open-letter to the community, Jason Thor Hall from Pirate Software shared his journey of developingHeartbound,the sleepless night, and the hard finances. And while he is enjoying the initial success, Thor caps off the letter with this:
Now we’re at today. With an email and twitter inbox filled with questions asking if I’m Toby Fox, how long Toby has worked on Heartbound, or why I stopped working on Delta Rune to make Heartbound. Except, I’m not Toby Fox. My name is Jason Thor Hall and I make video games about breakfast foods, sad kids, and dogs with the rest of my team. I do all of the programming, writing, and game design. Stijn van Wakeren does all of our sound effects and music. Bradie Shaye Rehmel does all of our art and animation.
In a series of Tweets, MatPat shifted the blame onto his employees at The Game Theorists (though noting that the buck stops with him) and noting the company’s policy on linking games that they are streaming:
However, this series of tweets irked Toby Fox – the unwitting participant in the drama due to the game’s visual similarity toUndertaleandDeltarune. Claiming that MatPat went “too far this time,” Fox chastised MatPat for not linking to games and misleading his audience.
This is a rather unprecedented move by Fox, who largely keeps a cryptically low-profile on social media. The critique is extra impactful, given MatPat and Game Theory’s constant breakdowns ofUndertaleandDeltarune–in other words, both content creators share an audience. As a result, MatPat responded with an apology, saying that they will start linking all games they play and that The Game Theorists will revise their tagging process.
At the moment, it seems like Game Theory is holding true to their claims, with the featured image for the video changing to something less misleading and a Steam link forHeartboundin the video’s description. However, Twitter is still chattering about Game Theory faults including MatPat’s lack of crediting employees or other versions of “clickbait.”
However, this is far from the only YouTube drama of the day – especially including how popularVRChatYouTuber Jameskii isallegedly having his channel held hostagethanks to copyright strikes.
Heartboundis available now on PC (and you canpurchase it hereif you are looking to support Pirate Software). Meanwhile, Toby Fox’sUndertaleis available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and PlayStation Vita.Deltarunewill be availablein the future, thougha demo of the gameis available now.
