Microsoft Responds to Fez Patch Dispute

Recently, news hit that Fez developer Polytron would not be fixing the recent patch for Fez that caused issues (specifically corruption) for some player’s save files. This was due to the apparently high cost of producing patches for Xbox Live Arcade hosted games. Microsoft has since responded to the issue, answering some questions, but proposing a handful more.

Microsoft released the following statement in response to the situation:

“Polytron and their investor, Trapdoor, made the decision not to work on an additional title update for FEZ. Microsoft Studios chose to support this decision based on the belief that Polytron/Trapdoor were in the best position to determine what the acceptable quality level is for their game.

While we do not disclose the cost of Title Updates, we did offer to work with Trapdoor to make sure that wasn’t a blocking issue.

We remain huge fans of Fez.”

Prior to stating that they were huge fans of Fez, the statement leading up to it seems to imply that Microsoft was willing to (or did) negotiate a price with Polytron. It might be that they were willing to go below $10,000, but it may also be the case that $10,000 was the bottom line price given to Polytron post-negotiation. Nothing else is known at the moment on the matter, but one thing’s for certain: no party appears to be lacking blame.

Microsoft has insanely high prices for its patching procedure, one that’s likely to cause financial woe for more small developers (if it hasn’t already). On the other hand, Polytron is deciding to leave their game in the (somewhat) crippled condition it’s in. It’s certainly understandable, but it’s nonetheless a pretty alarming, unfortunate bug.

“Less than one percent” of you (players of Fez) have been affected by the save-corrupting bug, and it appears that, until something changes, that will sadly remain the case.

If this scares you from playing, it honestly shouldn’t – Fez is, regardless of this occurrence, a wonderful game.

[via Giant Bomb]