Fez is broken. That much we know. But developer Polytron has chosen to re-release the broken patch that has resulted in certain players losing all of their save files. This is because the developer does not want to spend the money to fix the broken patch with a permanent solution because Microsoft want to charge them an arm and a leg to do it.

“We’re not going to patch the patch. Why not? Because Microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game,” Polytron’s blog reads.

“Microsoft gave us a choice: either pay a ton of money to re-certify the game and issue a new patch (which for all we know could introduce new issues, for which we’d need yet another costly patch), or simply put the patch back online. They looked into it, and the issue happens so rarely that they still consider the patch to be ‘good enough’.”

“In the end, paying such a large sum of money to jump through so many hoops just doesn’t make any sense. 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.”

The game breaking bug only affects 1% of players. But “only 1%” means that there’s thousands of Fez owners out there with a broken game.

“To the less-than-1% who are getting screwed, we sincerely apologize. We know this hurts you the most, because you’re the ones who put the most times into the game. And this breaks our hearts. We hope you dont think back on your time spent in FEZ as a total waste.”

Rather interestingly, the blog post actually made reference to Steam when it was first published last night. The Steam referecne has since been edited out. When we read it last night, Polytron explained that if they had released the game on the Steam platform and not XBLA, the game wouldn’t suffer the same issues it’s suffering now. Me thinks, they got a phone call from Microsoft to edit out the Steam part.

As it is, the re-released patch improves the experience for 99% of players. As such, Polytron deem it the best and most acceptable solution and are running with it.

Fez is almost certainly a timed exclusive on XBLA. Perhaps 100% of Steam and PSN users might get the experience they deserve if the get the oppourtunity to play the game on their service.