Toby Fox, creator of the brilliant Undertale, has weighed in on the debate surrounding music rights in the fanmade spin-off Undertale Yellow.
In development for seven years, Undertale Yellow acts as a prequel to the acclaimed indie RPG. The visuals and gameplay lean heavily on the original as you play as Clover, a child who's wound up in the Underground. It features over one hundred music tracks, including some remixes of Undertale tunes, and these have raised questions over the project's use of copyrighted material.
Undertale Yellow's developer recently addressed the topic on Twitter, saying that it's "been in talks behind the scenes" to resolve the situation. "Thanks to the cooperation and hard work of Toby Fox and Materia Collective, any YouTube claim that occurs can now be disputed and released," it says. "We hope this situation paves a better path for fanworks in the future."
An update on the music situation: pic.twitter.com/WUtRCz0A9TJanuary 2, 2024
This prompted a response from "music rights expert" Sebastian Wolff - CEO of the company that covers the copyright of Fox's music - who asked to see "clearly defined permission that Toby granted 7 years ago which covers all of these uses" and offered to donate $10k to Undertale's Yellow's development team if they could provide such evidence.
Undertale Yellow's reply was a message from, it claims, none other than Toby Fox himself, explaining that, as Wolff suggested, The Undertale Yellow team didn't have permission to publish any of the game's music and that this was only granted recently. Still, Fox bears no ill will towards the project or its creators and instead says this; "If well-meaning fans have made a mistake, it should be our job to figure out how to help them make it right." He adds, "More than anything, we should be supporting the love and passion of our fans at every opportunity."
Toby Fox has asked us to relay this message on his behalf pic.twitter.com/49gjQhwCRYJanuary 6, 2024
Not only that, Fox has, "as a token of apology", opted to donate $20,000 to AbleGames, a charity chosen by the Undertale Yellow team. "You can consider it as $10k for Sebastian and $10k for myself", Fox says. To help minimize situations like this arising in the future, the developer adds that he's planning to "create a more clear set of guidelines" related to the usage of Undertale's music as well as "better information on how to license the music properly."
If you fancy giving Undertale Yellow a go, you can download it now via GameJolt, though you might want to make sure you're well-versed in the original Undertale first, as this contains spoilers and a "slightly higher" difficulty.
As for Toby Fox's next project, according to a recent update from the developer, Deltarune Chapter 3 is "pretty much content complete," and the throwback JRPG will launch with Chapter 4.
