Polytron to re-release broken FEZ patch

Claims the cost of releasing an updated patch is too costly to small independent studio.

FEZ players hoping for an update to the broken patch – which caused save file corruption – are all out of luck, with developer Polytron confirming that the high cost associated with putting out a patch makes it too difficult to justify.

"Why not? Because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game," explained the studio in a blog post.

"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!

"We believe the save file corruption issue mostly happened to players who had completed, or almost completed the game. If you hadn't already seen most of what FEZ had to offer, your save file is probably safe. It doesn't happen if you start a new game.

"We believe the current patch is safe for an overwhelming majority of players."

Polytron continued: "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 don't think back on your time spent in FEZ as a total waste.

"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'.

Polytron concluded: "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.

"So we're going to go ahead and put Title Update back online, and for a vast majority of people it's going to make FEZ a better game."

The question is, will you be downloading the patch and risk save corruption or stick with what you have?