Microsoft has notified developers that its Xbox Live Indie Games programme will shut down by the end of 2017.

Subscriptions to the service are no longer available; next September, new games won't be accepted, and a year later, the XBLIG marketplace will close.

XBLIG was a service that allowed independent developers to publish their work easily as "Community Games" on Windows and Xbox 360 via the XNA development framework.

Notable titles published on the service included I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1, Cthulhu Saves The World, Avatar Paintball, and Weapon of Choice, by former Insomniac Games developer Nathan Fouts.

Fouts described XBLIG as "a dream come true," while Escape Goat 2 dev Ian Stocker called it "an amazing experiment on Microsoft's part."

However, as the new generation of consoles appeared, XBLIG remained previous-gen exclusive, and XNA was discontinued in 2013.

The Xbox One's equivalent is the [email protected] programme, which so far has not fulfilled its goal of allowing publishing from retail Xbox One consoles.