Fez patch back online, fix would cost "a ton of money"
Polytron has opted to re-issue a patch for Fez which can result in players losing save files, because of the high costs of certifying a new update.
"We’re not going to patch the patch. Why not? Because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game," the independent developer wrote on its blog.
"Microsoft gave us a choice: either pay a ton of money to re-certify the game and issue a new patch (which for all we know could introduce new issues, for which we’d need yet another costly patch), or simply put the patch back online. They looked into it, and the issue happens so rarely that they still consider the patch to be 'good enough'.
"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," the indie added.
Polytron said the save-eating issue only affects less than 1% of players, and its willing to play that "shitty numbers game".
"As a small independent, paying so much money for patches makes NO SENSE AT ALL. especially when you consider the alternative. Had FEZ been released on steam instead of XBLA, the game would have been fixed two weeks after release, at no cost to us. And if there was an issue with that patch, we could have fixed that right away too," it added.
Since the patch is believed to be safe for "an overwhelming majority of players" and "fixes almost everything that’s been wrong with the game since launch", Polytron considers it the best solution.
"For 99% of people, it makes FEZ a better game. To the less-than-1% who are getting screwed, we sincerely apologize. We know this hurts you the most, because you’re the ones who put the most times into the game. And this breaks our hearts. We hope you dont think back on your time spent in FEZ as a total waste," the team added.
Polytron has hinted in the past that it hopes to bring Fez to other platforms, but has not revealed the terms of an exclusivity agreement related to the puzzle platformer's Xbox Live Arcade debut.