Fez patch not going to be updated

Phil explains why here: http://polytroncorporation.com/were-not-going-to-patch-the-patch

We’re bringing the first FEZ patch online.
It’s the same patch.

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.

And because as it turns out, the save file delete bug only happens to less than a percent of players. It’s a shitty numbers game to be playing for sure, but 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!

Pretty loud protest against the MS cert system, and how it isn't great for truly indie developers. Wonder if MS will give a response.

None of that is much of a surprise. The same happened to Valve and Double Fine and many others.

Honestly, I can live with the frame rate issues and all that shit. The game is still fucking fantastic.

I hope Microsoft changes the way they do these things on the next console, this shit is ridiculous.

And then, minutes later:

but HEY! only a few months left to our XBLA exclusivity!

Hopefully that means it'll come to Steam soon and I can start making all of my friends (that don't have Xboxes) play it!

Glad I waited to play it. It's been sitting there installed for a while but I wanted to wait for the patch incase it broke my save. Soon I can start.

I don't know how I feel about this. So, the broken patch they brought out a while back isn't going to be fixed because patching that patch would require them to spend some money. Well fuckadooldledoo! Didn't that game sell gangbusters at launch?

Doesn't every other dev pay to fix their broken games, what makes Polytron and Phil Fish any different? I like many, bought Fez at launch, I haven't finished it just yet and I've been meaning to get back to it, but if I've been affected by the "broken patch" then I'm going to be PISSED! And I'm sure the 1% is still a huge amount of people, surely it's worth forking over some money to save face with some of your fans.

I realise the situation with Microsoft is pretty shitty also. From what I understand, Microsoft gives devs the first patch free, and it's something like £15-20k after that I've been told. Expensive, but I'm sure like all other devs, Polytron can afford it, it just seems like they're saying the cost of it outweighs the percentage of users affected, which isn't a good enough excuse if you ask me.

I don't know how I feel about this. So, the broken patch they brought out a while back isn't going to be fixed because patching that patch would require them to spend some money. Well fuckadooldledoo! Didn't that game sell gangbusters at launch?

Doesn't every other dev pay to fix their broken games, what makes Polytron and Phil Fish any different? I like many, bought Fez at launch, I haven't finished it just yet and I've been meaning to get back to it, but if I've been affected by the "broken patch" then I'm going to be PISSED! And I'm sure the 1% is still a huge amount of people, surely it's worth forking over some money to save face with some of your fans.

I realise the situation with Microsoft is pretty shitty also. From what I understand, Microsoft gives devs the first patch free, and it's something like £15-20k after that I've been told. Expensive, but I'm sure like all other devs, Polytron can afford it, it just seems like they're saying the cost of it outweighs the percentage of users affected, which isn't a good enough excuse if you ask me.

"XBLA's dev support is shit and it costs a fortune to patch our own game, while Steam is faster, easier and free. Therefore we will release the game exclusively on XBLA and complain about it."

microsoft is being shitty about this, the dev is being shitty about making it public. nobody wins.

Microsoft shouldn't charge any money at all for a developer to spend time bringing a game up to quality for their platform. It's ridiculous.

@Geno: This. Goddamn this pisses me the fuck off. WHY DID HE NOT REALIZE THIS EARLIER?! Every indie game ever has sold so much more on PC and the open format just lends itself well for stuff like free patches and extra content, whenever the dev wants to do it.. Anyway he is hinting a Steam version finally, so that's good.

"XBLA's dev support is shit and it costs a fortune to patch our own game, while Steam is faster, easier and free. Therefore we will release the game exclusively on XBLA and complain about it."

I remember reading that Kingdom's of Amalur had a similar issue. They announced a patch that would fix a number of issues and introduce a harder difficultly, but they scrapped plans for that after they went bankrupt.

@Geno said:

"XBLA's dev support is shit and it costs a fortune to patch our own game, while Steam is faster, easier and free. Therefore we will release the game exclusively on XBLA and complain about it."

MS paid him some upfront development costs. If the game had been developed six months later, it likely would've been a Kickstarter and sold on Steam. In any case, you can be damn sure that his next game won't be on XBLA.