With the release of Deltarune’s latest chapters this past week – chapters three and four finally joining the fold – everyone and their mother appears to be playing Toby Fox’s popular RPG. That includes streamers, of course, and it seems that those who use YouTube as their platform of choice are running into a problem that Fox himself has now had to address: copyright strikes.

YouTube’s copyright strikes are an ongoing issue, as the Google-owned platform has an automated system that is extremely hard to dispute once it’s made its verdict. Fox is still encouraging streamers to fight the good fight, however, as the music in his beloved game is free to use.

According to Fox, “the music has so many streams it hit a threshold for increased copyright strike aggression. Not kidding.”

He pleads with YouTube streamers, “PLEASE dispute these claims and they should be resolved.” Fox isn’t the first indie dev to find his internationally acclaimed game to unfairly affect streamers because of its sick in-game music.

Back in 2020, not long after Stardew Valley’s 1.5 update, developer Eric Barone – known for his moniker “ConcernedApe” – stated that any copyright claims made due to the streaming of his game should be brought up to him, as he is the sole owner to the rights of his farming game’s music.

“If you’re aware of anyone ever getting ‘flagged’ for using Stardew music please let me know” was Barone’s own plea to players back then, particularly pertaining to Twitch streamers at the time.

The fact that Barone requested players to report these flags to himself is something Fox may want to consider, as the appeals process on YouTube can feel like talking to a brick wall. According to YouTube’s own description of their copyright claims process, more than a billion content ID claims have been made by their automated detection system between July 2023 and December 2023 – slightly dated information, but you get the gist – and less than 1% of those claims have been disputed.

Well, yes. That’s how math works; provide a number as big as “more than one billion” and you’re most likely going to end up with juxtaposing percentage in the single digits range. Rounding with 1%, that gets you 10 million people disputing those claims – the population size of several major cities. Not exactly something to pat yourself on the back for.

Now that I’ve done actual math for this, I think it’s safe to say that the only thing that’s going to help out the hundreds, if not thousands, of YouTube streamers getting slapped with copyright claims for both Undertale and Deltarune, is Toby Fox himself publicly calling it out. YouTube doesn’t want to make cool guy Toby Fox mad; that’s just a bad look.

“I wish there was some way to not have these claims,” Fox says. “However, YouTube’s music system forces their existence. And if I try to remove my rights to the music from the system, bad actors will pretend that they own it to claim videos and make money.”

So, for any YouTube streamers out there, if you’re in line for a copyright claim appeal, STAY IN LINE.

After breaking Steam, Deltarune dev Toby Fox appears to aim to break the internet: “After you finish Chapter 4, make sure to load up your save file one more time afterwards”