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Fez glitched-patch goes back online, will not be fixed due to re-cert fees

They deny being paid by MS to make the game exclusive...yet they go exclusive

microsoft: pay me and i will publish your game and market it for you, thousands of people will buy it but you can't release it on any other platform, deal?


whoever: ok


not that hard to understand.
 

M3d10n

Member
I just hope Microsoft reviews their draconian update rules next-gen. With the boon in games-as-service and F2P, they'll be in a bad stop if Sony and/or Nintendo upcoming platforms can be host such games and theirs don't.
 

Moaradin

Member
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!

Then why didn't you release it on Steam?
 

USC-fan

Banned
Is this a MS thing or just a console thing? Anyone know about sony?


One thin i sure dont get about sony PSN is you download a game and right away there are patches too, why dont they just let you download the patched version instead. SMH...
 

Abylim

Member
Glad I didnt bother with it.

Seems like a stupid stance to take after trashing someone elses games for being "shit".

Its sad too, the game seems ok, but I cant support that kind of nonsense, and I wouldnt want too now. 1% is enough for Murphy's Law to kick in and I guarantee it would happen to me. Stupid murphy's law.
 

Jpb

Neo Member
Seems that a few developers have been having issues with the same policies at Microsoft. Tim Schafer had a lot of praise for Steam when it came to constant updates, it would have cost them 40k just to patch Brutal Legend. Whether you liked Fez or not, this kind of money for patches seems to be a pretty big problem for smaller companies.
 
Is this a MS thing or just a console thing? Anyone know about sony?


One thin i sure dont get about sony PSN is you download a game and right away there are patches too, why dont they just let you download the patched version instead. SMH...

Purely an MS thing...
 
Had FEZ been released on steam instead of XBLA, the game would have been fixed two weeks after release, at no cost to us.

...

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.

Why would anyone put their game exclusively on XBLA?
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
What ARE the certification fees for the? To encourage developers to make sure their shit works?
 

chiablo

Member
Indie developers, when will they learn that the XBox is a horrible platform for this very reason. I hope he releases Fez on Steam, get more profit than the XBox version, and never develop for Microsoft again.
 

MrDaravon

Member
I was waiting for the patch to continue playing. Now I'm just going to forget about it.

Same here. Bought the game within the first day or two, had horrible tech issues and it straight up crashed on me 3 times. Waited for a patch, the day it came out I heard it was broken, was still waiting (actually checked yesterday to see if there was any new news on it) and now this. While the MS cert fees suck, PART of the reason they are there are to ensure that developers don't just shit stuff out that may have issues or be broken, which is what happened here. It's a shitty situation, but one that these guys solely put themselves in, and now consumers are paying the price. I'm just straight taking this one off the backlog, and not supporting them in the future, don't give a fuck.

I'm actually tempted to contact MS and bitch and try to get a refund; I have a friend who has successfully done so on a few occasions (Mr. Driller Online being broken, and I know he's done it at least once more recently with success, but I can't remember the game).
 

coopolon

Member
Isn't this the guy who said he didn't want to release it on PC because he wanted the game to be a console experience?
 

bryehn

Member
I just hope Microsoft reviews their draconian update rules next-gen. With the boon in games-as-service and F2P, they'll be in a bad stop if Sony and/or Nintendo upcoming platforms can be host such games and theirs don't.

You don't think it costs money/time to re-cert a game or a patch on those platforms? Even a F2P play game.

Fact is, he knew what the MS process was going in and wasted his free patch on something that didn't fix the issues the game launched with.
 

ArynCrinn

Banned
Well, if this patch doesn't come I'm probably not going to be playing Fez anymore. If a Steam version hits great, but this is not a good way to support your customers.
 

mclem

Member
I have to wonder though why it costs so much to patch a game on the 360. What exactly is that money going toward?

Ensuring that the code is compliant with Microsoft's certification requirements. Any console manufacturer would be particularly cautious if anything cropped up which ultimately could lead to the system being able to run unsigned code.
 

Abylim

Member
I'm confused, and probably wrong, but I thought microsoft or sony usually paid to have stuff on their console? I thought Sony paid/helped out the dev for Dyad. I figured that would be normal?
Seems odd to pay to be on someones console exclusively.
 
I don't understand why the console manufacturers make their digital distribution services so toxic for independent developers. I get that the certification process is supposed to help them curate and maintain their walled gardens (cut down on the number of patches with a price wall and, I guess, help maintain a certain level of quality) but it seems to come at too great a cost for the smaller, independent developers.
 

saunderez

Member
What ARE the certification fees for the? To encourage developers to make sure their shit works?

Yes. That's the entire point. Instead devs use the fees as an excuse not to fix their broken shit. I admire what MS is trying to do but maybe they need to allow 3 free patches before they start punishing developers for their buggy shit. I don't think removing recertification altogether is a real solution.
 

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
But I thought they didn't want it on Steam because it's a "console game, not a PC game" that was "made to be played with a controller, on a couch, on a Saturday morning".

He had no problem demo'ing the game on a PC.

Who exactly funded this game?

But really, how many people are really required to test out a cert patch? Even with 10 people, 40 hours per week, $20 per hour...that's only $8,000 in salary. I was being very generous with the rate these testers are probably making.
 
You would of thought Indie developers would have learned by now.

4EdnN.jpg
 
Yeah, because Microsoft cares more about profit than they care about letting developers give gamers the best experience possible.

Polytron had the chance to patch FEZ for free and they fucked it up. This is their fault.

It'd be lovely if Microsoft could let them patch it 72 times for free until they managed to get a bug-free version, but unfortunately that doesn't come free for Microsoft who have to perform the cert checks.

(No one would realistically patch a game 72 times really, but I imagine these fees are there to discourage just such behaviour.)
 
Yeah, no.

Oh so it costs $20,000+ to push an update?

This isn't the developer's fault. Glitches happen in code. It's a theorem. The fact that Microsoft is charging them at least $20,000 to push what's probably 5 lines of code is Microsoft's fault.

Polytron had the chance to patch FEZ for free and they fucked it up. This is their fault.

It'd be lovely if Microsoft could let them patch it 72 times for free until they managed to get a bug-free version, but unfortunately that doesn't come free.

(No one would realistically patch a game 72 times really, but I imagine these fees are there to discourage just such behaviour.)

Hotfixes happen all the time. There's really no reason not to allow them to push this patch. It could literally happen fast enough to add a total of probably 800ms tops to the loading screen.
 

remist

Member
"Polytron ‏@Polytron

but HEY! only a few months left to our XBLA exclusivity!"

So wait. They didn't get paid and they still signed up for Xbox exclusivity? They must have gotten something out of that deal. Does Microsoft require exclusivity just for the privilege of being on their platform, for some games?

If I was one of these 1% I would definitively not be sympathetic to their deflection of blame to MS. No matter how stupid the fee for patches is with Microsoft, Polytron has fucked over a portion of their consumers plain and simple.
 

MrDaravon

Member
this attitude only exists if you dont follow modern gaming development at all.

That's irrelevant. I'm one of the people who thinks that there's maybe too much entitlement among gamers at this point, but as the end user and consumer it's not outrageous to expect a working product. Whatever business realities exist don't and shouldn't matter to the consumer (at least in this case/industry), if as a company you can't get it straight then you shouldn't be doing it to begin with. I don't buy games to provide donations to companies.
 
D

Deleted member 47027

Unconfirmed Member
Don't think of them as fees, think of it as a fine - a fine for having to fix something that wasn't right in the first place. And Polytron doesn't feel like paying for it.
 
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