Microsoft and Polytron are engaged in a back and forth blame game, with both companies pointing fingers at the other one.
The issue arose when Indie studio Polytron refused to release a new patch for their Xbox Live Arcade game, Fez, despite it having a critical bug that sometimes corrupts save files. The Canadian studio has said that Microsoft’s imposed fees for releasing the patch are too high, and it isn’t willing to distribute the patch at that price.
Microsoft has come back with a rebuttal however, saying that they offered to work with Trapdoor (Polytron’s investor) on the update fees, but no agreement was reached.
Microsoft said, “Polytron and their investor, Trapdoor, made the decision not to work on an additional title update for Fez. Microsoft Studios chose to support this decision based on the belief that Polytron/Trapdoor were in the best position to determine what the acceptable quality level is for their game.”
They also added, “While we do not disclose the cost of Title Updates, we did offer to work with Trapdoor to make sure that wasn’t a blocking issue. We remain huge fans of Fez.”
There are no definitive sales figures available for Fez, but according to Polytron more than 100,000 copies have been sold, for around $11 apiece.
Source: CVG
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Microsoft charges a fee for game updates? That’s just wrong and MS loses a lot of respect in my book.