Developer Polytron has advised Fez players against downloading the recently released patch in order to protect their save games from breaking.
The independent software developers have acknowledged the gravity of the issue and already started working on resolving the issue, hinting that it may take up to two months. Until then, the players have been recommended to stay clear of the new patch unless they are already facing trouble while trying to access the game.
“We’re trying to find out what happened and fix it as soon as possible. Like, in less than two months,” Polytron stated in the latest post on its website.
For the time being, Polytron has offered a temporary solution to the problem, suggesting the players to delete their system caches. It is just a potential workaround to the problem and if it fails to protect the progress, then the players will have no choice but to embrace the fact that their saves are gone for good.
“There is an issue that seems fairly widespread where the save file can be seen as corrupted by the game after installing the patch. We’re floored that this wasn’t found in testing. For the moment, deleting your system cache should resolve the issue, but if that fails, there is no known workaround. We’ll keep you updated on the situation,” stated the website.
Microsoft has already acted to protect new users by pulling the patch from Xbox Live before they are prompted to update their game and consequently find themselves dealing with the corrupt save games issue.
Polytron had released the patch for Fez after receiving e-mails from players that highlighted a number of issues present in the game. These problems ranged from major issues such as unusable save files and frame-rate slow down at certain points in the game to rare crashes, infinite death loops, misdetection, sound issues and graphical issues. The patch also intended to introduce certain performance improvements in order to make the experience more satisfying.
Released for Xbox Live Arcade on April 13, 2012, Fez instantly became a bit hit., with IGN rating the game 9.5 out of 10, while some sites going as far as giving it a perfect score. A year after the game was announced by its creator Phil Fish, the puzzle-platform game had won the “Excellence in Visual Art” award at the Independent Games Festival. The game also got nominated for the “Design Innovation” award at the same event, though it failed to bag that award. Fez went on to win the “Best in Show” award at IndieCade three years later in 2011 before claiming the “Seumas McNally Grand Prize” at the latest edition of Independent Games Festival.
The popularity of Fez is arguably at stake following the release of the new patch, something that Polytron itself would be quite aware of.
The PlayStation Vita is better than the Wii U tablet – Sony exec 
Xbox 720 price and release date leaked?! – Rumour 
Sony executives take massive pay cuts after record losses
Sleeping Dogs to feature voices of Emma Stone and Lucy Liu
Dishonored developer voices concern over lack of variety in industry
PlayStation Vita getting Gran Turismo?
Zynga’s Bubble Safari runs at 60-fps on Facebook