Broken Fez patch being put back online, won't be fixed

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Sorry, Fez players, your game just sucks.

A little while after Fez hit the Xbox Live Arcade service, developer Polytron released a patch to fix a number of bugs that were discovered post launch. Unfortunately, the patch brought a bigger problem of its own: corrupting save files. The patch was promptly pulled down and Polytron went to work on a fix.

Last night came the news that the patch wouldn't be fixed after all, as they had decided that the broken patch was "good enough." Director Phil Fish, who was the source of some controversy earlier this year over some negative comments concerning the quality of Japanese video games, explained why in a blog post. It's pretty simple. "Because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game."

Fish, who has previously gone on record as saying Fez would not be released on PC because because PCs can't deliver a "Saturday morning cartoon, comfy couch experience," went on to say, "Had FEZ been released on Steam instead of XBLA, the game would have been fixed two weeks after release, at no cost to us." Oh, if only.

Fish insists that only about 1% of players encounter to save-destroying bug, so if you haven't bought Fez yet, it's up to you to weigh those odds.

Staff article by Rhody Tobin (July 19, 2012)

Rhody likes to press the keys on his keyboard. Sometimes the resulting letters form strings of words that kind of make sense when you think about them for a moment. Most times they're just random gibberish that should be ignored. Ball-peen wobble glurk.

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	zippdementia posted July 19, 2012: Customer service, guys. Customer service.
	SamildanachEmrys posted July 20, 2012: I think that's unnecessarily snarky. For an alternative perspective, try this: http://www.merseyremakes.co.uk/gibber/2012/07/contextualizing-the-debate/
	zigfried posted July 20, 2012: I'm uncomfortable with that editorial you linked. Just kidding. More to the point: A) The first patch was free. It fixed most issues. Phil Fish could have left things at that instead of making it a bigger deal by pulling the patch, then re-releasing the same patch with a long-winded rant against The Man. B) Regarding his "woe is me, damn The Man" rant: Penalties for releasing multiple patches are intended to prevent the Xbox 360 from suffering the same thing that has plagued PC gaming -- where buggy products are released and patched multiple times until the developer finally gets it right. As a consumer with ghetto internet, I appreciate Microsoft's practice of punishing multiple patches. The amount sounds excessive (I heard 40k), but it's a consumer-friendly practice on Microsoft's part. C) Phil Fish tends to act like a prick, so I derive pleasure from seeing him get treated like a prick. //Zig
	SamildanachEmrys posted July 21, 2012: The parts of the article I linked that I found particularly noteworthy were the remarks about indie developers lacking access to monumental amounts of money (particularly after the game's development time ended up multiplying about five-fold) and the point about the Steam/XBLA question. Steam was not a force to be reckoned with in indie at the time Fez's development began, so XBLA was the logical choice. Sneering that Fez should have been on Steam anyway takes advantage of information that Phil Fish couldn't have possessed at the time.
	zigfried posted July 21, 2012: Indie developers don't need monumental amounts of money. If you're going so far as to put a game onto XBLA, then you should be able to drum up some QA testers. Failing that, you get a free patch. If an indie developer finds themselves in a situation where a critical second patch is needed, then they screwed up. The big money penalty has prevented some games from being patched, which is a stain on those games' reputations, and that's a good thing because it sends a message and dissuades other developers from releasing broken games onto XBLA. That being said, a second patch is NOT critical for Fez, which is why Phil Fish could have avoided mainstream attention by simply saying the first patch was good enough and leaving it out there. By revoking the first patch and later re-releasing it with a rant, the "necessity" for a second patch looks exaggerated in the public eye. So, the "I don't have money" argument garners no sympathy from me, since there's no good reason to need patch money in the first place. And besides, Phil Fish already won multiple monetary awards (to the tune of tens of thousands) for an unfinished game. I wonder how the indie devs who had actually finished their games felt about that. //Zig

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