Microsoft offered to help Polytron with patch fees

Microsoft has claimed it offered to help Polytron patch its XBLA title Fez despite the indie developer claiming costs were too high.

Last week the US studio said it was unable to fix a save file corruption issue affecting one per cent of its users due to excessive update fees.

The team claimed had the game been released on Steam, it would have been able to patch the game for free, rather than have to spend tens of thousands of dollars.

“We already owe Microsoft a lot of money for the privilege of being on their platform,” read a statement from Polytron.

“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.”

Microsoft however has claimed in a statement to Kotaku that it was prepared to work with Polytron and investor Trapdoor to ensure costs of title updates were not a blocking issue, and that the developer declined.

“Polytron and their investor, Trapdoor, made the decision not to work on an additional title update for Fez,” read the statement.

“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. 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.”