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[M]

Phil Fish did a postmortem on Fez at Gamelab 2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LG1fOOUSOw

It costs 40,000 dollars to submit a patch to Xbox Live 

[Nix]

That doesn't sound even a little bit true.

[Blademasterbobo]

http://www.hookshotinc.com/interview-schafers-millions/

I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch – we can’t afford that! Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that’s where it’s at, and doing it completely alone like Minecraft. That’s where people are going.

[brettchalupa]

Yup, yeah, I remember reading that.

I don't understand why it costs 40k to release a patch. If there is a problem with the game and it's on Microsoft's service, wouldn't they encourage developers to fix it, instead of charging for them to fix it?

Also, in regards to the first Fez patch, I wonder if they will need to spend another 40k to get the second patch up. It seemed largely due to a lack of extensive testing on Microsoft's part. Hopefully, since it got pulled, that they don't need to pay again.

[PsySal]

They got the first patch for free, but when it nuked the saves and they realized they needed a second patch, Microsoft is making them pay for it.

$40,000 is an absolutely bullshit fake fee for releasing a patch to a game on a digital distribution platform. If you are so concerned about the quality of the game, why not make patching free? Or are we to believe Microsoft puts 1000-2000 person-hours of testing time into each patch? Lies. Lies and stupidity.

[Blademasterbobo]

they charge you for the certification process, which apparently does nothing or else they wouldn't have needed the second patch.

[Chris Pavia]

I think the fee is supposed to cover things like the time testers and producers put into their part of the process. Not that I agree with it....

[Gabriel Verdon]

What I don't understand is why is certification necessary on XBLA and PSN, but not for Steam? Steam doesn't even require ESRB ratings. Is it just because there is no legislation for PC downloadable games right now?

[Chris Pavia]

What I don't understand is why is certification necessary on XBLA and PSN, but not for Steam? Steam doesn't even require ESRB ratings. Is it just because there is no legislation for PC downloadable games right now?

It's really just a self-imposed system to (in a perfect world) try and keep the quality of content as high and bug-free as possible (not counting the ESRB stuff). And the system is really long and involves a ton of people, who need to be paid so the gatekeepers pass those costs on to the developer.

I've been on both sides of the TRC process, and they are extremely in-depth and tedious.

[Blademasterbobo]

and yet they missed a bug that deleted entire save files

[The Bag]

and yet they missed a bug that deleted entire save files

That's not the sort of bug cert testing will catch, that should have been caught by standard testing by the developer or by the publisher's QA team if there was one.

[moi]

normally, if you go on XBLA, that means your game game has the potential to attract sales (otherwise you'll just throw money away), and a good game on XBLA should make $40k in a very short time.
That said, yes, it's more micro$$haft bullshit

[Chris Pavia]

and yet they missed a bug that deleted entire save files

It would be great if money guaranteed a 100% bug free game, but unfortunately that is not the case. Which is probably a good thing, because then everyone would charge $40K.

And if Phish is telling the truth, that bug only happens to less than 1% of people, which would make it pretty hard to catch.

[Klaim]

What I don't understand is why is certification necessary on XBLA and PSN, but not for Steam? Steam doesn't even require ESRB ratings. Is it just because there is no legislation for PC downloadable games right now?

The technical reason would be that as Steam don't have humans in the release & testing process (you have to do the testing yourself), it cost nothing but bandwidth and cpu cycles, and they can give it to you for free as it benefit them that your game gets better.

Microsoft is acting exactly like other console companies (I am even surprised that people around here don't know about the release process on consoles) so they have people checking games before release. The problem with that is that as people are needed to do the tests AND they have tight schedules to test, they just check essentials and validate. They check more only if the game is provided in a time where there is not tons of games to test.

What I tend to call "the old industry" is as slow as expensive. They are like old times armies: they can't work as efficiently as guerilla commando.

[cskau]

And if Phish is telling the truth, that bug only happens to less than 1% of people, which would make it pretty hard to catch.

It bothers me a bit that everyone seems to be down playing "a mere 1%".
I mean imagine if 1% of cars had a bug where the brake would completely fail. People would be dying left and right.
Sure sure, flawed analogy, but still it should be quite clear that even 1% is a huge number of people.