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[Oddball]

To be honest I think Microsoft are blameless here. It's not a hidden fee, it's there in black and white and Polytron signed on the dotted line. It's not Microsoft's fault if Polytron didn't budget enough money for updates. If they didn't want to pay the update fee then they shouldn't have signed, or they should have done enough testing to get it right first time.

[C.A. Sinner]

Maybe it's their fault but it's still stupid to essentially punish devs for fixing their games imo. I mean Fez is a pretty large and ambitious game made by a small team, of course there are going to be bugs.

Also as other people have said, Apple doesn't demand ridiculous fees for Appstore updates and I've never had a problem with those.

[Oddball]

Whether the fee is excessive is a totally separate issue. If this thread was about indie devs abandoning the Xbox then I'd be one of the first to suggest they're pricing themselves out of the market with excessive update fees, but obviously indie devs are still flocking to the system so they'll continue to overprice updates. The issue here is that at some point a contract was put in front of Polytron and they read it through and either decided they were going to make the game perfect first time, or that they could afford to patch it if it wasn't. If they didn't consider this beforehand then they are idiots. Would I commit to $40,000 update fees if I couldn't afford it. No way in hell I would.

[_Tommo_]

Whether the fee is excessive is a totally separate issue. If this thread was about indie devs abandoning the Xbox then I'd be one of the first to suggest they're pricing themselves out of the market with excessive update fees, but obviously indie devs are still flocking to the system so they'll continue to overprice updates. The issue here is that at some point a contract was put in front of Polytron and they read it through and either decided they were going to make the game perfect first time, or that they could afford to patch it if it wasn't. If they didn't consider this beforehand then they are idiots. Would I commit to $40,000 update fees if I couldn't afford it. No way in hell I would.

This.
The game should be as perfect as possible, as there are players who paid and got a bugged game in return. Telling them their money is lost is just dishonest.

The right thing to do would be to complain AND release a patch, while bitching is perfect Fish style

[Claw]

Carrying on from twitter Dave (140 char responses suck) I agree with what you're saying. As I mentioned I think it's just a balance of efficiency - money vs the reward.

The save bug hits 1% of players, of that 1% how many of them had just bought the game before the patch was applied and so would be half way through THEN got wiped? Then of those how many would be pissed enough to get angry about it. People who were affected who bought it a while ago would have already finished it and if they played through, probably want to start again ( I did this).

That's the way I look at it, just seems like the numbers affected wouldn't warrant a 40k charge to fix, but I do say that as someone with no money.

It just sucks basically, totally feel for Renaud; it's stressful enough putting a patch live but with a massive $40k knife hanging over your head while you do it and you find it's broken, it'd be the worst thing.

If it affected everyone I'm sure they'd have coughed up to money, but because it's such a small number it seems more efficient for them to just leave it and take the fallout. Anyway yeah, that's how I see it.

money sucks.

PS. although if people want a refund they should be totally entitled to it.

[moi]

With over 100,000 in sales at $10 each equaling 1 million dollars, M$ taking their 30%, leaving Fish & Co. with 700K, I would imagine Mr. Fish has made at least 300K so far. At least..

microsoft doesn't take 30% on XBLA, they take 70%

Hmmm, I dunno.  Would a millionaire think twice about blowing $40 grand on patch?

a greedy millionaire would


Also: the whole idea of dividing the money earned by the time passed working on the game and saying things such as "oh! he spent ten years working on his game and earned only $100k, it's only $10k/year, he's actually poor!" is bullshit.
The time they spent working on the game is already spent, eaten and paid for (wether they had to take a loan is another problem but most indies don't do that, unless they're a real company)

[Darren_D_Daley]

With over 100,000 in sales at $10 each equaling 1 million dollars, M$ taking their 30%, leaving Fish & Co. with 700K, I would imagine Mr. Fish has made at least 300K so far. At least..

microsoft doesn't take 30% on XBLA, they take 70%

No the fuck way. Do you have anything backing this up, because that kind of a split is straight up theft.

[Gabriel Verdon]

Yeah, where did you hear that? I'm pretty sure you made that up. From what I've heard from fellow developers (who have shipped XBLA titles and worked with Microsoft) that it varies by contract, but usually falls in the 30%-40% range.

[Birdorf]

Whoever is right or wrong, it seems that they're both ignoring the end user, they ought to work something out and get it sorted.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

XBLIG was a 30% fee last I checked up. I'd be surprised if XBLA was an extra 40% plus various extra charges.

[BattleBeard]

i just dont like phil flish

[Richard Kain]

At the end of the day, the massive fees for XBLA patches/changes, are clearly in place to penalize developers for altering their games post-launch.

For smaller indie developers, such restrictions are ruinous. With modern game design, releasing a purely bug-free game is almost impossible, even with millions of dollars of QA to throw at it. This is exactly why Zeboyd intentionally cut XBLA out of the Penny Arcade Episode 3 release schedule, opting to release the game only for XBLIG on the 360, and for Steam on the PC.

Its really no wonder that smaller developers are bailing on the 360 left and right. This is also why so many developers are excited about just the possibility of the Ouya, and not having to put up with these kinds of restrictions for console development. Microsoft was the first to open up console development with XBLA, XBLIG, and XNA. But their failure to properly promote, support, or encourage indie development has been a wasted opportunity.

While the PS3 is far more exclusive in its support of indie development, most of the postmortems I've read about PSN development efforts have been much more positive. Specifically, Sony has been much better about promoting and advertising smaller indie games on PSN, and giving them prominent placement on their store front.

I can't really blame PlayDead for passing on an early PSN deal, as Sony wanted their IP as the cost of entry. But its clear that Sony wanted to keep Limbo exclusive to PSN. I also can't blame Sony for trying to "acquire" a potential critical darling.

[Hangedman]

Save bug affects 1%. Patch still released, save bug will never affect anyone again after the first time. Other bugs fixed.

1% of 100000 = 1000 players.

Let's say 25% of those players have already completed the game, and are unlikely to play again, it's just there on their digital shelf. If they did begin again, most people would restart from scratch.

750 players.

Let's say 25% of the remaining players have bought it but didn't really get very far at all, to the point where it's largely irrelevant.

~550 players.

Cost to refund those seriously affected ~550 players: ~5500.
Cost of a patch that will affect less than 1000 people: 40000.

Be realistic

[Oddball]

It's really sad if they are playing the numbers game. I guess I've just been spoilt by all these altruistic indie developers. They were happy to shake hands with Microsoft so they should suck it up and do the right thing. I've made choices that I'd later regretted, but you take it on the chin and don't blame the system you agreed to.

[Richard Kain]

They were happy to shake hands with Microsoft so they should suck it up and do the right thing. I've made choices that I'd later regretted, but you take it on the chin and don't blame the system you agreed to.

On the one hand, you are right. They agreed to this, and if they are upset now, it's likely because they didn't read the fine print.

On the other hand, Microsoft actually is losing indie developers. Team Meat has already stated that they don't intend to produce games for XBLA again. Quite a few indie devs are now pushing for release on PSN instead of XBLA. And of course, Steam is now touted as the home for successful indie development. Just look at the weak offerings for this year's summer of arcade. The indie development scene is already abandoning Microsoft. The Fez postmortem is just further confirmation of existing trends.