Ska Studios’ lead developer James Silva has come to the defence of Xbox's much-maligned Live Arcade practices, claiming that hate directed at Microsoft only hurts the indie scene.

In a blog on his studio’s website, the Dishwasher: Vampire Smile developer said he had only positive experiences dealing with the tech giant, but that story wasn’t considered newsworthy and didn’t fit the current anti-Microsoft Live Arcade news narrative.

“When one indie says they’re never working with Microsoft again, the gaming public becomes curious as to whether this is an isolated incident, or part of some sort of ugly truth,” said Silva.

“Pretty soon everyone wants to know if I’ve just been secretly hiding my experience with the ugly truth, or if I’ll be moving to PS4 because of the ugly truth, when in fact this perceived ugly truth is nothing more than 4 or 5 data points.”

According to Silva, reinforcing the “Microsoft is bad for indies” narrative doesn't hurt Microsoft, but it does hurt indie developers.

“I vividly remember reading this IGN article calling XBLIG a failure roughly a year into its life and thinking basically the same thing: telling thousands of readers that Microsoft is failing at indie gaming is telling thousands of potential customers that Microsoft is failing at indie gaming,” he said.

“And while everyone likes a sale, the ones who really, desperately need the money aren’t the Microsoft people who greenlight the projects, they’re the indie developers who are trying to quit their day jobs, trying to buy a house, trying to raise a baby.

“As a consumer, would you think twice about buying a game from a ‘failed platform?’ Would you hesitate at buying an indie game from a company that ‘screws indies?’

“But that’s the current narrative, and while it sucks for Microsoft, it sucks a lot more for indie developers who are publishing on XBLA.”

Contrary to the stories that made the news, Silva found working with Microsoft was “great”,

“We have full creative control. This is our game. 100% of the (non-localized) content in (his new game) Charlie Murder was made by Michelle and me, or, in a few cases, by a few gaming celebrities who we got some rad cameos from,” he said.

“Microsoft gives us localized text from our English text, finds bugs, tells us how to fix bugs when we’re stumped, tells us how close to passing cert we are, and takes us out to dinner when we’re in town.

“They provide some great creative and design feedback and technical services that have helped us nail down some obscenely obscure bugs, and they host internal Charlie Murder playtest parties, which is awesome.”

If others were happier elsewhere, that was fine for them, Silva added.

“XBLA is a closed, carefully curated platform with its own set of fairly rigid standards and protocols.

“For me, it was just a matter of ‘do the work, release the game’, and that’s exactly what we did.”

“Microsoft does not steal indie blood.”