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How Toby Fox Achieved a Net Worth of $3 Million

Toby Fox is a composer and video game developer. He is best known for developing ’Undertale’ and ‘Deltarune.’ Although Toby Fox is his real name, he is often called Toby ‘Radiation’ Fox, and he is known online as FWugRadiation. Fox began his career in 2009 and has since achieved phenomenal success. Due to his success, Toby Fox’s net worth is now $3 million, and here is how he accrued his wealth.

His Childhood

Toby Fox was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 11, 1991. Along with his brothers, Fox would spend hours playing video games when he was a child. He particularly liked role-playing games, such as ‘Earthbound. Fox and his brothers even tried to develop games together using the ‘RPGmaker’ software.

Unfortunately, their early attempts were unsuccessful. During his teens, Fox became a member of various online communities for fans of ‘Earthbound.’ Only one of the three games was released in America, so the communities were a good way to connect with fans from around the world and to learn more about the game.

He even began creating his own hacks. It was also during his teens that Fox became interested in music, and he began to teach himself music. He began to compose pieces and entered his work into competitions. After leaving high school, Fox attended Northeastern University.

Toby Fox’s Career as a Composer

Fox’s career as a composer began in 2009, while he was in his final year at high school. He composed various pieces of music for the 2009 webcomic ‘Homestuck,’ created by Andrew Hussie. The webcomic creator had put up a post asking for musical contributions, and Fox did not initially respond. However, Fox came to Hussie’s attention when he began posing piano covers of the music from ‘Homestuck’ on an online forum.

Since then, Fox has composed more music for Hussie’s work, as he composed various pieces for the video game ‘Hivestack.’ He has also composed music for the narrative game ‘Escaped Chasm’ and the RPG ‘Little Town Hero.’ Furthermore, Fox has also composed a vocal song for Itoki Hana’s PRAY album and a track for ‘Pokemon’s Sword and Shield.’

In 2020, Toby Fox was a composer for Temmie Cheng’s video game debut ‘Dweller’s Empty Path.’ Cheng was the only person to contribute to Fox’s game Undertale, as he undertook all the tasks except the artwork, which Cheng did. Fox was also a composer for the psychological-horror role play game ‘Omori.’

In the same year, Fox tried his hand at becoming an illustrator, as he did illustrations for the Hobonichi Mother Project. He was also an animator and director for Chip Tankai’s ‘Hammerhead Shark Song.’

His Career as a Video Game Developer

Although he had attempted to develop games during his teens, his attempts were unsuccessful. According to The Famous People, he did not try again until 2012. He took inspiration from Japanese games but designed his characters as parodies of popular characters from American role-play games.

When Fox finished his game demo, he sent it to his online communities and to friends in the industry. The feedback was positive, so he launched a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter in 2013. He hoped to achieve funding of around $5,000 and highlighted the key differentiators of the game to attract more interest from potential investors.

By the end of his campaign, Fox had raised more than ten times his initial target. Fox eventually released the game, which he called ‘Undertale,’ in 2015.

At first, it did not attract much attention as there was a lack of publicity. However, word-of-mouth spread and the game soon became popular and successful. It had sold more than one million copies by September 2016.

Made the Forbes 30 Under 30 List

The game also won multiple awards, and its success resulted in Fox being included in the games Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Some of the tracks Fox wrote for Undertale were unused. Therefore, he released some of the unused tracks separately in 2016.

Over the next two years, Fox began secretly working on a follow-up to Undertale, which he called Deltarune. He did not let fans of Undertale know about his plans until the day before he released the game. On October 30, 2018, Fox simply used his Twitter account to ask fans to check back in 24 hours.

He then released the first chapter of Deltarune to fans for free, using the guise of a survey. Fox gave no further information about the game until November 1, when he revealed that he would release the rest of the chapters together but that he had not begun working on the rest of the game.

He also gave no timeframe for when he estimated the completion of the game. The next time he communicated with fans about the game was in June 2019, when he let fans know that he was hopeful of completing the game and that he had written approximately 50 songs past chapter one. There has since been no further news about the release of this game.

Toby Fox’s Net Worth

Due to Fox’s career success, he has become a wealthy man. According to The Wealth Record, Toby Fox’s net worth is currently $3 million. He has predominantly made his money through his work as a game developer, although he has also made money as a music composer.

His Personal Life

In his personal life, Toby Fox is currently single. One of his best friends is Andrew Hussie, the creator of the ‘Homestuck’ comic strip. It is rumored that Fox completed his design for ‘Undertale’ in Hussie’s basement.

Due to the amount of time he spends on the computer and gaming, Fox suffers from severe wrist pain that often impacts his ability to compose and develop games. After the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Fox hopes to have either physical therapy or surgery to resolve the issues with his wrists.

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Allen Lee

Written by Allen Lee

Allen Lee is a Toronto-based freelance writer who studied business in school but has since turned to other pursuits. He spends more time than is perhaps wise with his eyes fixed on a screen either reading history books, keeping up with international news, or playing the latest releases on the Steam platform, which serve as the subject matter for much of his writing output. Currently, Lee is practicing the smidgen of Chinese that he picked up while visiting the Chinese mainland in hopes of someday being able to read certain historical texts in their original language.

Read more posts by Allen Lee

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