Okay, they knew what the policies were when they signed up. Big deal. It's not like the devs predicted that they'd botch a patch for some 1% or so of their users.
The developer is just saying, "Look, the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't support making a new patch." That's honest. It doesn't sound like a policy to me (you'd have to so something more than once before I'd call it "policy"). The devs don't owe it to the affected users to pony up the cash to Microsoft. Devs don't have unlimited liability for lost save files.
Microsoft's policy makes sense from a "Look, it costs money to make sure that your games don't crash on users' systems." So maybe Microsoft will change the policy so that a small enough patch goes through a less thorough review process. That's what happens when your policy has unintended consequences: you reevaluate it.
It sounds like a small percentage of users were affected by corrupted save data upon upgrading from the previous version.
100% test coverage is pure fantasy. You might as ask for a 100% complete specification of a product before you begin working on it.
I'm actually just being devil's advocate here, but most bugs in games are not that important, and the companies that are a little sloppy can spend less money making mostly the same product.
The developer is just saying, "Look, the cost-benefit analysis just doesn't support making a new patch." That's honest. It doesn't sound like a policy to me (you'd have to so something more than once before I'd call it "policy"). The devs don't owe it to the affected users to pony up the cash to Microsoft. Devs don't have unlimited liability for lost save files.
Microsoft's policy makes sense from a "Look, it costs money to make sure that your games don't crash on users' systems." So maybe Microsoft will change the policy so that a small enough patch goes through a less thorough review process. That's what happens when your policy has unintended consequences: you reevaluate it.