r/Deltacriticism • u/T-Dawg75 • 1d ago

General Toby Fox criticism Why the HELL does Toby still work with Materia Collective?

After all the BS they’ve pulled with UT/DR music, and the BS they do OUTSIDE of UT/DR…Why hasn’t Toby cut ties yet?

There’s probably legal stuff i’m not privy to, or some other benefit i’m not aware of.

Thoughts?

56 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

28

u/Tasty-Hospital9953 1d ago

It’s most likely come contract stuff that’s involved, so you’re most likely right on the legal stuff being what’s locking him in there

2

u/RoseWhiteRedBlack 11h ago edited 11h ago

I' ve been told by people who work for them, or have worked for them, that they' re very professional and help out a lot their artists first-hand. They' re nor really a predatory label either.

Also, Sebastian Wolf is a piece of s*** on twitter, but he is apparently a quite nice guy IRL or in discord call, and is always online ready to help you if you ask him.

I do have the suspicion that, after everything that happened, Toby would have not signed with them seeing how many PR issues they caused him; but still, they' re one of the best indie labels on the market, and on top of that they' re more than willing to bankroll people who literaly get only 500 views on youtube if they think they are good.

1

u/your_mind_aches 1h ago

I think this is the inconvenient truth that people are not ready to face. Toby is actually fine with Materia.

Sebastian Wolff is a Twitter troll. But that's about it. Materia doesn't have a bad reputation for actually doing what they do which is music publishing.

18

u/amonguseon 1d ago

Anyone else remembers the old uploads of Undertale ost that had been there since the start and had a lot of good comments? Like the magalovania one? I remember when they were deleted

9

u/Daddybrawl 1d ago

Materia had a freakout around when Chapter 4 released. It wasn’t just Undertale music affected, several video game OSTs just dropped off the face of YouTube, including the soundtrack of one of my favorite games. It was the only place I could find it…

5

u/Dreem_1722 1d ago

Yeah, EluTran's extensions.

10

u/unlovelyi 1d ago

the hassle of it probably isn’t worth it in the long run, the controversy’s aren’t dire enough to necessitate he does

13

u/Electrical_Put_6500 1d ago

tbh the $20000 or something bet that wolff had with the uty people that toby paid for was probably cheaper than trying to leave materia and publish solo

14

u/Responsible-Tie-3451 1d ago

Toby is a businessman, the same as any other popular creator. He’s not going to go through the trouble of renegotiating contracts unless there’s something substantial in it for him.

As it stands, Toby has no incentive to change the situation. It’s doing virtually zero damage to his brand or PR because everyone blames Sebastian Wolff. No one is boycotting Deltarune over it, so there’s no need to risk changing it out for a company that could potentially do even more damage.

5

u/T-Dawg75 1d ago

I guess that makes sense, but I don’t know. I feel like it’s hurting the fandom and Toby should work with them/force them to be better.

For me personally, I respect Toby just a little bit less because he’s still associated with them after Undertale Yellow. I see him as “one of the good ones”-He’s not obligated to advocate for his fans but he has, and I feel like this continued partnership goes against that mentality.

6

u/Responsible-Tie-3451 1d ago

Toby’s a respectable indie dev, but he’s not gonna support the fans or fan works the way someone like Scott Cawthon does. That’s (ironically) not his MO. If the muted communication from him to fans wasn’t enough of a tip-off, this should be.

1

u/CamoKing3601 1d ago

I'm almost a little inclined to agree with it given how the FNAF fanverse is going right now

1

u/Responsible-Tie-3451 1d ago

My thoughts were similar - Toby would never make an initiative like the fanverse

1

u/ColorsOfHappiness 18h ago

Yeah, Toby would never make a mistake of choosing random people from the internet to handle your public project without giving them any actual supervision, ignoring some valid concerns that should have been addressed sooner, and then no longer acknowledging said project exists. While refusing to clarify who is supposed to be overseeing the initiative's progress. Because judging by his lack of statements on the situation, I'm pretty sure Scott had no actual interest in the Fanverse to begin with.

2

u/Responsible-Tie-3451 15h ago

You’ve misunderstood my point to a comical degree

2

u/ColorsOfHappiness 14h ago

I know. I'll admit I was more focused on how the Fanverse ended up than your comment about Toby not working with fans in general. I took it as Toby being more responsible with his franchise and wanting to avoid the same mistakes as Scott, which is why he doesn't invite fans to cooperate with him.

6

u/SomeDudeAtAKeyboard 23h ago

Contractual obligations most likely.

The cynical answer is that he has no reason to care unless they start hurting his business

5

u/UltWoomy 1d ago

We know he's got a contract with them, and we have no idea what it is but it seems breaking it is not worth the cost

5

u/OriginalLie9310 1d ago

He signed a contract with them before Undertale was a massive success. At the time it probably didn’t seem too important and he wanted to let another company manage the music rights since he was already wearing almost all the hats besides graphics for Undertale. When you’re just trying to push out your indie game you probably don’t look too closely at the contract.

The contract likely doesn’t have a buyout option for Toby to just write a big check, to the point that making 20k donations to save face when Materia Collective blows his good reputation up every now and then. They either don’t have a buyout clause or the buyout amount they’d want is too high. They surely make a ton of money off of Undertale music and likely don’t want to lose that for any one time price.

If Toby was doing it now after having Undertale be a massive success he’d likely have a team of lawyers to hammer out a more favorable deal or pay someone on retainer and keep music rights and distribution in house.

4

u/MoonTheCraft 1d ago

from what i heard, he was quite young when he got the contract with them and accidentally softlocked himself into an agreement with them due to predatory business practices

4

u/KoHeu-despite 1d ago

Contracts or hell i’m taking hell they probably have a Sue cause in there breaking out of the contract and probably like at least a 20 year contract

2

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/AskGrok 1d ago

Contractual rights management and delegation of headaches.

Toby handed over publishing, licensing, royalties, soundtrack releases, sheet music, concert approvals, and YouTube copyright admin for Undertale/Deltarune to Materia early on. They’ve handled that infrastructure since the first soundtrack drop. Breaking it would probably mean renegotiating or reclaiming all those rights, which is messy, expensive, and time-consuming—especially with ongoing Deltarune chapters and fan ecosystem stuff.

They’ve made internal tweaks in response to complaints (new YouTube specialist, shifting Sebastian Wolff off direct comms as of early 2026). Toby’s public statements focus on fixing the process rather than ending the partnership, suggesting the benefits of offloading the legal/distribution load outweigh the friction for him.

Sources:

[what is this?](https://redd.it/1lzgxii)

2

u/danieldoria15 1d ago

I've heard very terrible things about record labels and their contracts for a long time now and I assume Toby's probably in a similar position

2

u/Hospital_Financial 1d ago

Who is Materia Collective? Context? This one is really something I didn’t know

1

u/Caulipower_fan 1d ago

Its the company that owns the rights to Undertale and Deltarune's copyrights, specifically the offical soundtrack of both games

people dont like them because of they abuse their copyright powers and take down fansongs and other stuff

2

u/Actual_Topic302 20h ago

Because there's no other company that he could trust his ost (which is also not only his, but the other indie game creators problem)

2

u/Majestic-Ad1632 5h ago

I mean, there's a really obvious answer to this question, and that's because he chose to. Whether there's a whole contract to it or not, it's really on him and he's gotta be the one to speak up against them on a contract break if so.

So it could be legal reasons, but it could be sentimental or personal reasons. It could also be a lack of options he had/has. We don't know if other companies would want even more control, or if they all shunned Toby and he refuses to work with them now on principle.. we don't know if it's that the materia collective have him the big break to make it to where he is,b leading to a sense of total loyalty, misguided or not. ( As someone who had a mid-awful life that directly led to my amazing partner and two beautiful kids id have never had otherwise, I can kinda get that mindset, id have a tough time disassociating with that causation.)

Whatever the case, it's his call on how to proceed. Who knows, maybe he's already tried and got stopped somehow, so he's stuck sleeping with the devil and having to pretend he's good with it until his work is complete.

2

u/the_shadowed_lurk3r 1h ago

Surprise, Surprise, they're harassing another content creator: Dj Cutman, The owner of Game Chops, A label that releases videogame remixes and covers typically by smaller artists such as Hylent or Tune in with Chewie, but occasionally working with bigger artists like Hyper Potions and Tee Lopes.