It’s not an exaggeration to say Undertale is one of the most influential indie games ever made, and last year’s Deltarune quickly became a huge success for developer Toby Fox, too. There’s one small problem that’s slowly become bigger than anyone anticipated, though: to this date, both RPGs are still missing localization beyond Japanese.

Via Automaton, we’ve learned about Fox’s latest comments on the matter after a period of silence that’s caused many international communities – especially the Latin American one – to grow more impatient. Undertale and Deltarune’s massive success should at least guarantee a translation to one of the most widely used languages (Spanish), right? Well, the game developer has other plans and one excuse that will get everyone talking.

Following a tweet about OFF getting a Japanese translation, fans promptly reminded him his games still didn’t support languages other than English and Japanese. Fox went on Bluesky 29th March to explain his position and why official translations outside of Japanese haven’t happened. Furthermore, he gave everyone updates on the officially licensed Undertale concert series and shipping costs problems with merch products handled by Fangamer, but those aren’t our focus here.

“I want to make it clear that this isn’t because I have a grudge against other countries,” he said after a more vocal part of the community accused him of xenophobia on social media. “It’s because, if I release something official, I want it to match my vision. I was only able to do this for the Japanese version because I know Japanese myself, and I worked very closely with our brilliant translator to thoroughly check the text,” he added before confirming he and his publisher, 8-4, have been looking at options recently, “but nothing has come of that yet.”

While he stated he’s happy unofficial translations on PC are a thing, he ultimately believes any official translation should have his stamp of approval, which is a bit of a problem since he doesn’t appear to be fluent in languages other than English and Japanese.

Considering other indie devs with less successful games have managed to get their works fully translated without hurting the original texts in the process, this seems like an easily avoidable problem and a matter of getting the right collaborators on board. For now, the renowned creator isn’t willing to relinquish control over all those words yet.