Sorry, Guys, the Fez Patch Isn’t Getting Patched
“It wasn’t an easy decision, but in the end, paying such a large sum of money to jump through so many hoops just doesn’t make any sense. We already owe Microsoft a LOT of money for the privilege of being on their platform. People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM.”
Polytron Games explaining why 1% of you are going to continue experiencing save problems with Fez.
The initial patch that fixed a mess load of bugs in Polytron’s standout title Fez has been put back online after being removed once it was found out that a vicious little save glitch paired with the update would delete players’ entire progress.
Having investigated the matter, Microsoft determined only somewhere near 1% of the people that downloaded the patch ran into the problem, which places the patch in the “good enough” category by the company’s standards. Microsoft then gave the indie developer behind Fez two options; pay “tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game” or merely put the original patch back online, bugs and all.
Without the financial backing of a larger developer, and also still being reamed by the payments the dev has to make just to have their game on XBLA, Polytron took the only feasible route they saw (which was not to succumb to bankruptcy) and reissued the patch, deeming it safe for an overwhelming majority of Fez owners, putting to bed any chance of a patch for the patch.
Want to hear the kicker? Polytron fully admits that had they released the game for Steam, the fix would have only taken two weeks to launch without a single cost to them, Microsoft being the one factor stopping that scenario from happening for 360 owners. Yeah, with a smoking barrel of a statement like that, I doubt we’ll see another Polytron game on the Arcade anytime…ever.