Microsoft Taking Heat For Five-Figure Xbox 360 'Patch Fee' 323
wasimkadak sends this quote from Ars:
"Developer Phil Fish knows there's a problem preventing some people from enjoying his Xbox 360 puzzle platformer Fez as intended. But he's not going to fix it, thanks to what he says is an exorbitant fee of 'tens of thousands of dollars' that Microsoft would charge to re-certify the game after a needed patch. The issue started on June 22, when Fish released a patch intended to fix some outstanding gameplay and performance issues with Fez. That patch gave rise to new problems for some players, though, by causing their save files to appear as corrupted, in effect erasing their progress through the game. Microsoft pulled the initial patch for the game mere hours after it first went up, to prevent the bug it contained from spreading too far."
Another article covering the story suggests this situation is simply a mis-match between an indie-dev's expectations and the realities of a curated gaming platform.
Why should MSFT work free because he fucked up? (Score:5, Insightful)
If he doesn't like the terms, he can scrap his game or disclose the problems with every sale.
I dislike MSFT, but they owe him nothing.
Yep... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the early days of the internet me and my friends used to dream of what the internet would bring, new levels, new modes, online scoreboards, new content, online multiplayer, cheaper localization, the end of region restrictions...
Only to never see them fully realized.
"mis-conception" (Score:4, Insightful)
The walled garden is designed specifically to make sure Microsoft makes money on every transaction, no matter how insignificant. That's why UEFI is going to kill the PC... if the platform is locked, you're screwed. But at least Microsoft will be making money... so it's all good. As long as corporations control everything, we shouldn't worry.
Re:Yep... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why should MSFT work free because he fucked up? (Score:5, Insightful)
I dislike MSFT, but they owe him nothing.
That's true. Well, beyond what they charged him for the dev kit, and the fee to publish on XBLA, plus their part of the profits from the game sold, plus the tens of thousands he paid them to certify the first patch. So, you know, the hundreds of thousands (at a guess, could be millions or a few thousand) of dollars they have made off him. Beyond that, nothing at all!
OTOH, he did fuck up, and he could publish the patch even now if he really wanted to (but it only affects a few people who already finished the game before the patch, so it wouldn't be worth it financially from his point of view). Frankly, neither MSFT nor Fish comes up looking very good from this whole ordeal.
Re:For real? (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds more like he's blaming them for charging tens of thousands of dollars to certify and post the corrected patch.
The second article makes a good point though (and some stupid ones). He's floating on over a million dollars in sales. The crazy-high cost of certification is extortion, but it's also fair to say he has a certain obligation to the folks who bought his game. Meanwhile, the nasty little outbursts aren't going to win him a ton of fans.
Re:Why should MSFT work free because he fucked up? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just another forseeable consequence of the absence of software freedom on the platform. Every author and distributor of non-free software should be scolded every time their policies cause problems. Both Microsoft and Fish are in the wrong.
Mismatch of expectations for curation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Another article covering the story suggests this situation is simply a mis-match between an indie-dev's expectations and the realities of a curated gaming platform.
I don't see how anyone can say this with a straight face in light of the fact that the largest curated platform right now is the iOS App Store, which is several orders of magnitude larger than XBLA, and the only fee it charges its developers is the $99 annual fee to be a developer. I can understand Microsoft wanting to make some more money and to perhaps provide a higher level of quality for their curation over what Apple does, but that doesn't justify charging tens of thousands of dollars. They need to rethink their model entirely.
Re:Why should MSFT work free because he fucked up? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point is their policy is encouraging developers to leave buggy code out in the wild. I fully understand the MS position, but they need to come up with another billing model for recertification.
I'd think it would be the other way around - the high price to put out patches means you'll test much better before releasing a patch, so you won't have to do it multiple times.
Which is what this guy didn't - his initial patch (which he paid for) broke things, and now he balks at paying the costs for putting out a second patch to fix his first broken patch.
I don't normally have sympathy for Microsoft, but in this case, I think the rage should be against the developer who refuses to pay the price to fix something HE broke - a price he already knew about beforehand, and which wouldn't have been an issue if he hadn't broken things with his patch.
Who loses on his stinginess (or bad testing procedures) are the "very few" users who are left in the cold. I hope he at least will refund them the cost of the game, but based on what attitude he displays, I doubt it.
Re:Team Fortress 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:For real? (Score:4, Insightful)
So the guy blames Microsoft after being the one pushing out a faulty patch to begin with? LOLWUT?
Something does not add up; a patch was produced for the game with apparently no fanfare regarding the cost for "recertification," and then when it was revealed that a bug still existed (albeit in an apparently hard-to-spot corner case) only then did he go ballistic and cry foul? He must have known about this "extortionate" fee beforehand, so why only complain after a bug he put in the software made him pay it twice?
Re:For real? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why should MSFT work free because he fucked up? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, MS verified it didn't break the Xbox, so it goes live. Oh, it broke the game? Well, fix the patch, learn a lesson in proper patch QA, and submit the new patch for re-verification. That's the way it SHOULD work.
I used to deal with this all the time at a previous position; we would intensely verify that a 3rd party patch would not tear down our Unix platforms prior to release. Those platforms were our company's lifeblood, and keeping them safe was 90% of my job. That doesn't mean I can (or care to) test whether a software update that my guys didn't write for an application we don't control had the developer's intended effect on their software. And yes, if the 3rd party changed their patch, we *would* require re-verification it before pushing it out again. You simply do not release untested software onto production servers. I don't care if some programmer protests "all I did was change a variable name and recompile!"; it's still gonna get re-verified prior to release.
I don't think Microsoft is in the wrong on this one; re-verification should be charged. Now, you may have a case if you consider the verification fee to be exorbitant.
Re:For real? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't like the idea of games being released "broken" with intentions of fixing it after release, but artificially making it extremely expensive or impossible to patch something is a double-edged sword.
I can't remember a game in the last ten years that didn't have something wrong with it (arguably, a near-impossibility with modern game complexity), and timely, free fixes have been welcome for that.
So maybe something more suited to, "if you had to release a gajillion patches to make your crap functional, you dropped the ball and need to pay for our time" instead of, "first one is free, after that it's a five digit bill".
There's room for reason in there, somewhere.
Re:For real? (Score:4, Insightful)
If he had put out good code to begin with, none of this would be an issue.
If his patch hadn't screwed up the customers' save files, none of this would be an issue.
I don't blame MS for saying he needs to re-certify his code because his code seems to be pretty crappy.
Re:For real? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't remember a game in the last ten years that didn't have something wrong with it
Right, that's my point. The past decade being when game studios could count on everyone having a fast internet connection to download patches. This is the problem that making it costly to patch can help solve.
(arguably, a near-impossibility with modern game complexity)
On the contrary. Game complexity may have gone up, but programming complexity has gone down, and it's far easier to write bug-free code than it used to be in the past. In the past, developers had to write extremely optimized code using difficult to debug obscure tricks and undocumented features of the OS and hardware, without advanced compilers that can warn you when you're using an uninitialized variable.
What actually happened is that patching is far cheaper than doing QA. You use your first users as your QA group, let them find the bugs, and then patch it. Well, as a developer in a startup without a proper QA team, the thing that I hate most about my job is debugging and QA work. I put up with it because I'm paid to do it. If I'm going to do it for your game, you need to pay me. If I'm paying you, I expect you to have made a good effort in QA. I don't expect bug-free code everywhere, because I do understand the costs go up exponentially as you get closer and closer to guaranteed bug-free, but I expect a much better effort than a guaranteed patch two days after the game is out.
So maybe something more suited to, "if you had to release a gajillion patches to make your crap functional, you dropped the ball and need to pay for our time" instead of, "first one is free, after that it's a five digit bill".
There's room for reason in there, somewhere.
Right, and I'm not advocating banning patches, so I think I am being reasonable. Your strategy encourages releasing a broken game, and then taking forever to release the first patch, as you let the users gather a large number of bugs that you can fix all at once. If you make every patch cost $50,000, for example, you know that as long as you're spending less than $50,000 on testing to avoid that patch, you come out ahead. If that's not enough to cut down the number of patches to a reasonable level, you up the price and make it cheaper to spend even more on QA.
And maybe you do graduate the cost based on developer size. Charge EA $200,000, charge indie groups $1,000. Make it a percentage of total game revenue or something.
Toll Gate (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a problem with any locked in system where 1 source controlls the Toll Gate to the only entrance.
Re:For real? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For real? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, go patch something without introducing some hidden bugs, and come back and tell us how easy it is.
It is pretty much impossible to get every bug, look at big developers with hundreds of programmers who can afford large dedicated bug killing programs... Now go look at their running bug lists. Hell, Google sources the community to find bugs in some of their projects, offering money even, and bugs, big and small, manage to sneak through.
Bugs happen. Its a fact of life. Patching should be quick and simple. There is no logical reason to dissuade developers from fixing their products.
Just goes to show that you should test your code, and leave the coding to professionals.
Like who? Bethesda? Obsidian? Ubisoft? Google? Microsoft? Mozilla? None of them have ever released a buggy product, or released a fix that introduced more bugs than they fixed. Nope. Never.
Also, yes please, we should preclude the little guy from making innovative content... We need more EA games.
Re:For real? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you make it expensive to patch, then there will be no patches... That doesn't mean games will actually be released any less buggy, just that there will never be any patches for them.
Re:For real? (Score:5, Insightful)
They should have a graduated scale, maybe $100 for the first patch, $1,000 for the second, $10,000 for the third, and so on.
Except I'd really like to get most bugs fixed, eventually. This way you'd get the major bugs fixed early but the minor bugs that you only get around to fixing late would be crazy expensive to fix. I think the price should be time-based instead, the longer between patches the cheaper it gets. If you have to patch then repatch then repatch again, then that SHOULD be expensive. If you patch, collect up all these minor issues and make a "refining" patch three months later then I don't think it should cost you much. The goal is after all to avoid patchmania.
Separation of Concerns (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably the patch was certified. If so, clearly certification means nothing because it didn't catch saved file corruption differences between versions, which would be one of the primary things certification should test. He should ask for his certification payment back.
Certification by the platform vendor should check that the game correctly uses the platform, but it cannot check that the game correctly implements its own semantics - that's a job only the game developer has responsibility for. This case concerns a file intended to save the state of the game so that it can be resumed from that state. In some cases, the file is incorrectly written, so the game resumes in an unintended state. You can only tell that this is buggy behavior if you understand what was supposed to happen: comparing the file to the one written by the previous version is not a valid test, because the point of a patch is to change some aspects of the previous version's behavior, and how, in general, is the platform vendor supposed to tell which differences between the versions are intended and which are errors?