Microsoft Taking Heat For Five-Figure Xbox 360 'Patch Fee'

wasimkadak sends this quote from Ars: "Developer Phil Fish knows there's a problem preventing some people from enjoying his Xbox 360 puzzle platformer Fez as intended. But he's not going to fix it, thanks to what he says is an exorbitant fee of 'tens of thousands of dollars' that Microsoft would charge to re-certify the game after a needed patch. The issue started on June 22, when Fish released a patch intended to fix some outstanding gameplay and performance issues with Fez. That patch gave rise to new problems for some players, though, by causing their save files to appear as corrupted, in effect erasing their progress through the game. Microsoft pulled the initial patch for the game mere hours after it first went up, to prevent the bug it contained from spreading too far." Another article covering the story suggests this situation is simply a mis-match between an indie-dev's expectations and the realities of a curated gaming platform.

Comments

Team Fortress 2

[The MAZZTer]

This is part of the reason TF2 is largely unpatched on the Xbox... Valve was going to wait to make one big content update, but then they exceeded the Xbox's memory limitations. Whoops.

Re:Team Fortress 2

[hairyfeet]

Haven't looked at PCs in awhile have you? I'm playing on an AMD 6 core and an HD4850 I got for $50 and I have tons of bling and have no problem with the new games like Saints Row 3 or Deus Ex HR. Very few games are doing the old Far Cry I "Our game is useful for benchmarking!" bit because it simply limits your audience too much. I have no doubt my boys and I will be playing on our two hexas and the youngest with his quad come 2020 when the OS goes EOL with nothing but a $50-$100 GPU update in about another year that will take all of 10 minutes and is simple enough my teen boys will change out their own. Oh and as a bonus you can put your old cards on Craigslist and get some of your money back which makes the cards even cheaper.

This is why I'm glad me and the boys have switched almost exclusively to PC gaming, too much BS, too much price gouging, and talking to friends frankly the patches are just as bad and large for the PC only as in TFA you simply may not get them and instead get stuck with a buggy game for your hard earned $$. Thanks to the Steam sale by the time its over on the 22nd me and the boys will have enough games to last us until the big Xmas sale and that's with crazy cheap prices, games automatically patched for free, free MP with matchmaking and chat, its just a nicer experience all around. hell nearly all the games support controllers if that's what you prefer and nearly all the modern cards have HDMI out so you can plug that PC into your widescreen no problem.

For those that prefer consoles you might want to watch this video by Jim Sterling where he points out that all the advantages consoles use to have frankly are rapidly disappearing, with consoles having the same bad attributes as PCs such as long loads and large patches, and the good things are being matched or surpassed by the PC.

Re:For real?

[LateArthurDent]

It sounds more like he's blaming them for charging tens of thousands of dollars to certify and post the corrected patch.

The second article makes a good point though (and some stupid ones). He's floating on over a million dollars in sales. The crazy-high cost of certification is extortion, but it's also fair to say he has a certain obligation to the folks who bought his game. Meanwhile, the nasty little outbursts aren't going to win him a ton of fans.

Frankly, I'm all for a very high fee for patching. As high as possible.

The internet made it so that games are released broken, with the mentality that they'll just patch later. The way I see it, you should have the mentality that no patch will ever be released, and test the hell out of it. Patches should be a very rare thing. By increasing the cost of the patch, you cause people like this guy to not release the patch. That hurts the users, but it also hurts him, because as people find out his game is broken, his sales will decrease. So maybe in the future, he'll keep that in mind and do proper testing.

We've made it cheap to patch games anytime. We need to make it expensive to make the cost involved in thorough testing cheaper than patching later.

Re:For real?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Presumably the patch was certified. If so, clearly certification means nothing because it didn't catch saved file corruption differences between versions, which would be one of the primary things certification should test. He should ask for his certification payment back.

Re:For real?

[Mike Buddha]

Actually, the bug was uncovered during the certification process. He was given the option of releasing the patch as is, or fixing the bug and re-certifying the patch and then releasing it. He opted to line his own pockets and screw his customers by not pulling the patch, fixing the bug and re-certifying. Then he complained that it was Microsofts fault for uncovering the faulty code and adhering to the patch release policies that had always been in place.

Re:For real?

[Anonymous Coward]

Developer pushes out game with minor, end-game bug. Developer drops $40K to patch minor bug, inadvertently causing a much more serious issue. Developer devises fix for this and attempts to publish it, but M$ demands another $40K, causing developer to reconsider his motivations and the justification for fixing such a minor bug.

$80K is a bit much to throw at a bug that only a very tiny fraction of your customers will experience... so, yeah, the fact that the game will probably go unpatched is entirely Microsoft's fault. You can go right on retelling the story in progressively poorer light, but it won't change the fact that this patch would be live /right now/ if it weren't for Microsoft's extortion.