News YoYo Games "Game Maker" software is now completely free for non-commercial use, some commercial use only requires a one-time fee of $99

[Krvavi Abadas]

Hi everyone,

We have a special gift for our community this Thanksgiving. From now on, GameMaker will be free for non-commercial purposes on all non-console platforms. At the same time, to meet the needs of hobbyist and indie developers, we are introducing a new one-time fee - a commercial licence that is replacing the current Creator/Indie subscriptions. Nothing changes for developers targeting the consoles, our Enterprise subscription remains the same.

WHY THIS CHANGE?​

To say 'Thank You'! Since we joined the Opera family, GameMaker has seen a three-fold increase in its active users! Lots of young people came to try GameMaker, over 6,000 games were published on gx.games, and as a result of the product evolution, GameMaker is now better than ever. And a bonus! all our asset bundles will now be free for everyone.


We have seen other platforms making awkward moves with their pricing and terms, so we thought, what if we did the opposite, something that could actually be good for developers? Our success is measured by the number of people making games!

So…

Here we are - Happy Thanksgiving! The new pricing structure reflects GameMaker's commitment to making game development more accessible and flexible.

the software has been used in a ton of notable indie games since it's debut, such as Undertale and Hyper Light Drifter.

the only current catch with this new setup is that the one-time commercial fee only applies to PC/Smartphones/Web Browsers. you still need a yearly "enterprise" subscription to release your games on consoles.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Well, thank you Unity!

Ages ago I got a version of GameMaker Studio by way of Humble Bundle, but it was shortly before they launched GameMaker Studio 2 so it didn't take long to feel out of date. I thought it was pretty fun and easy to get some simple 2D games going that worked both on Windows and phone, though. Will not at all mind checking out the current form.

EDIT: The $99 one-time fee for PC/mobile/web is very cheap. $800/yr for consoles is a heavy step up, but I guess in general that's not a step you take until you think you can sell a few copies.

 

[IsisStormDragon]

Oh this is pretty cool! A friend of mine has GameMaker Studio 2 and I helped him put together a game for a student project, but I've never gotten around to trying out GameMaker myself despite wanting to. Guess I can move it up on my list with this news.

I honestly can't remember if I heard they were bought/owned by Opera, though. How has that been going?

 

[TheCongressman]

Kick unity while they're down, get as much of a hold on the market as you can get. It's a good move.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I honestly can't remember if I heard they were bought/owned by Opera, though. How has that been going?

I didn't see this in their About section or the bottom of the page or anything, but I was looking in those places because logging in with my ancient account it was suggesting I convert it to an Opera account, and part of the installation talked about output running on Opera GX, so it definitely seemed like it.

 

[Tangerine_Cookie]

I still remember having to physically mail a 10 € bill to get a Game Maker 1 license back in the day.

 

[grobla123]

This is excellent, I wonder if this makes the next Undertale scale popular game more likely to occur? A lower barrier to entry is always good.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

I've been toying with this for a few days. Once you get the right bits installed, exporting the same project to Windows, Android, or the web seems mostly painless. Here's the first thing I've put on their gx.games site. Followed their Asteroids-clone tutorial then started making various changes. Movement control can be arrow keys, WASD, or mouse/touch holding. Shooting can be space bar or mouse click/finger tap. Added some smoke effects for when asteroids rub by each other. The further you make it into the game, the faster the asteroids start to get. Bullet speed takes craft speed into account rather than always starting at a constant. Keyboard O and P can even be used to alter the frame rate, which I mostly used while seeing if I could get it to behave the same way at different rates. And most obviously, graphics/sounds based on my buddy and his kid.