When an update for indie darling Fez hit Xbox Live and crippled many gamer’s save files, it was all but assumed that the game’s developers Polytron would fix it and release a new patch.

Nope. They’re re-releasing the same patch with game corrupting date still intact. Why? It’s a numbers game according to Fez Producer and Polytron co-founder Phil Fish.

“We’re not going to patch the patch,” Fish wrote in a blog post on Polytron’s website. “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!”

If it seems like Fish is unsatisfied with Microsoft’s system, you’re right — the Fez designer goes on to talk about how his dissatisfaction in length.”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”.

Fish also went on to apologize to the small percentage of gamers that the patch is effecting. ” 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.”

About The Author

Joe Sinicki is Blast's Executive Editor. He has an unhealthy obsession with Back to the Future and wears cheese on his head. Follow him on Twitter @BrewCityJoe

Leave a Reply