It isn’t a very hot start to 2019 for The Game Theorists and their star creator Matthew Patrick (better known as MatPat). Following a livestream of newly-released title Heartbound, the 10M subscriber YouTube channel landed in hot water with Undertale and Deltarune‘s creator Toby Fox. According to Fox, MatPat and Game Theory went “too far this time” with misleading videos and refusing to promote the indie games they are profiting from.
As mentioned above, the controversy all started with an upload a stream of recently-released, Kickstarted game Heartbound by developer Pirate Software — a game totally unassociated with Undertale, Toby Fox, or Deltarune. In The Game Theorist’s sister streaming channel, GTLive, MatPat and his wife Stephanie Cordato played roughly an hour and a half worth of the game:
While most content creators (especially indie creators) would be ecstatic about a channel with over a million subscribers debuting their game, Pirate Software seemed irate. As noted in the Tweet below, MatPat published his video with 75% of the tags leading to Undertale, Deltarune, or a Toby Fox created game, didn’t include a link to the title, and entirely misspelled the studio’s name:
Hey @MatPatGT I'm pretty disappointed here and so is our community. Your recent #GTLive came across as an Undertale clickbait mashup instead of being about #Heartbound. You never linked to our game and you got our studio name wrong as well. https://t.co/3UHMarlGPt pic.twitter.com/mE3we4H1HH
— Pirate Software @ Minefaire San Diego (@PirateSoftware) January 3, 2019
Of course, the larger issue was one of feeling unappreciated and creating confusion among consumers. In a long open-letter to the community, Jason Thor Hall from Pirate Software shared his journey of developing Heartbound, 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 now-deleted 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:
– Regarding links, we don't tend to link back to the games we're playing — that's not an intentional slight on you, it's just rarely something we do for games that aren't fan-made or free. We'll talk about having a more standard policy around that.
— MatPat (@MatPatGT) January 3, 2019
However, this last line irked Toby Fox — the unwitting participant in the drama due to the game’s visual similarity to Undertale and Deltarune. Claiming that MatPat went “too far this time,” Fox chastised MatPat for not linking to games and misleading his audience.
You should link to ANY game you play. Creators need all the help they can get. And think carefully if you're misleading your audience with how you present your videos. You went too far this time.
— tobyfox (@tobyfox) January 4, 2019
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 of Undertale and Deltarune–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.
Thank you for moving forward on this and updating your policies. It really means a lot to us and I know it will mean a lot to other developers in the future. I know this situation sucks right now but I think you're doing the right thing here.
— Pirate Software @ Minefaire San Diego (@PirateSoftware) January 5, 2019
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 for Heartbound in 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 popular VRChat YouTuber Jameskii is allegedly having his channel held hostage thanks to copyright strikes.
Heartbound is available now on PC (and you can purchase it here if you are looking to support Pirate Software). Meanwhile, Toby Fox’s Undertale is available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and PlayStation Vita. Deltarune will be available in the future, though a demo of the game is available now.
The post Undertale Creator and Game Theory’s MatPat Clash on Twitter Over Misleading Heartbound Stream by Lou Contaldi appeared first on DualShockers.