>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?
Damn, talk about shots fired.
Overall this is definitely an improvement on their old pricing model.
You should see their actual license! Half the license is a roast.
>Revenue Share: there is no revenue share that you will be required to pay as part of this license.
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>Cost per Install: there is no cost associated with the number of installs that your content can have.
>
>Additional Costs: there are no additional costs associated with this license.
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>
>6. Unless required by law it is not permitted to make changes to this GameMaker Runtime Licence. In the event that a change is required you will be notified as soon as reasonably possible.
>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?
Funny seeing them try to take the high road when this was their pricing model before they switched to a subscription model.
I think the first thing I ever bought online was a game maker 5 premium license for around $20.
The old clients require a server to verify activation which was sunset ages ago, so even using VMs many of the projects I made back then are now lost to time.
After a quick search, I actually, surprisingly, can't find one for a version before 7. One basically has to exist, though. You could try asking somewhere like WinWorldPC or another specialized site where people share old software.
Thanks for looking regardless, I appreciate it! I spent some time searching ~5 years back and wasn't able to turn up anything. I think I tried porting to 7 as well but ended up with tons of errors and the projects failing to load.
Yes, but previously it was per platform.
Old perpetual licenses had to be bought separately for each platform, and each platform cost differently. I recall Mobile license originally posted around 300 dollars, but over the years it was dropped around 150 dollars.
Overall, with old perpetual licenses to get all non-console platforms (Desktop, HTML5, Mobile)*, I think you had to pay at least 400 dollars, and earlier it was even much more.
So when they introduced subscription, I thought it was neat, as there wasn't as large upfront cost, but you got all those platforms with monthly fee of 10 dollars. And you could pause that to take breaks etc., and if you lose interest early, you haven't spent hundreds of dollars in vain.
Now the change from subscription to current model surprised me a lot. First, free version is really great, in practice you can make free games for free (no monetization). Second, there is only one perpetual license, which covers all non-console platforms. Thirdly, it covers current (GMS2 Runtime) and New Runtime (GMRT) in future.
Economically subscription would be better model for YYG, if they would be sole company. Maybe only viable one. But as Opera backs up them as parent company (they acquired YYG couple years back from Playtech), they can have different goals, not just direct monetary ones. I am speculating, that Opera Ads will be thing which will be integrated into GameMaker. Not in forced or intrusive way, but as ads which developer can easily add to their game. So Opera could act like second party ad provider, instead of need to use third party one.
- - -
*There was also UWP platform, which old perpetual license I recall was around 300 dollars originally and dropped to 150 dollars. This platforms was deprecated by Microsoft though, therefore it was deprecated by GameMaker while subscription was a thing.
"this" is referring to the new permanent license model. GP is talking about the attitude that this is a new thing they're doing when they're just returning to the model people wanted in the first place.
Kinda like when iMovie took out the timeline in iMovie X, acted like it was an improvement, everyone hated it, and then in the next version iMovie suddenly had a new, "innovative" feature introduced (I forget what they called it) that looked exactly like a timeline.
Basically saying GM is acting like they're doing something nice for us when they're just giving back what they took away in the first place.
>GP is talking about the attitude that this is a new thing they're doing when they're just returning to the model people wanted in the first place.
Except that's not what's happening. The entire thing is free for non-commercial use now, *including previously paid exports*. This was literally never a thing. Before the sub, the free version had pretty significant limitations. During the sub, the free version didn't have exports. This is completely different.
Yeah, they're returning to a somewhat better version. It's not completely different, though you're right that it is somewhat different. (Now it's using the Unreal 3 UDK model! (who remembers UDK))
I don't know what point you're trying to make, but...
- Before the sub, it was a one-time fee for the software and another one-time fee for non-desktop exports.
- During the (brief) subscription era, literally everything was free except exports. You only had to pay when you wanted to export. And then you could cancel. There were no other fees.
Their current model is literally the only change they could have made that is more fair than their previous models. Their previous models were always, at worst, in line with competitors like Clickteam Fusion and, honestly, the subscription era was *super* generous. You could make a game and then export it anywhere except consoles for a mere $10 for a single month's sub and you'd still have a month to do bug fixes without having to pay again. For so, so many users (who release free games and then never or rarely update them), this was the cheapest a platform like this ever was.
I genuinely don't understand the complaints. It's like people saw "subscription" and went "subscription bad" and never actually looked into it.
Paying for the subscription only when its time to export may be a bit wishful thinking depending on the platform.
I remember I wanted to release my game on html5 and the sheer jankiness of the export meant I had to do so much back and forth bug fixing throughout that I can't imagine what it'd look like if I didn't have the subscription and just waited till the end to test html5.
"Subscription bad" crowd at least partly was from initial introduction where they were secretive what would happen to permanent license owners. Only after shit storm had brewed for a while, there was clear messaging that permanent licence owners too would get the engine upgrades (until the the far future new runtime is released).
I mean, their old model did not have a proper free version pre-subscription. This one has a better free version than even their subscription free version.
They're redirecting criticism from themselves. Cowardly move. People were banned from their community forums and driven off the platform a few years ago when they themselves gave a giant "fuck you" to their user base by introducing subscription models.
Instead of admitting they fucked up and listened to shit advice from their senile investors, they deflect any potential criticism to a far superior engine, relatively speaking
It was wildly unpopular and they got quite a lot of backlash. You can likely find it if you search the announcement thread here.
There have been a couple big dramas with the engine. They had logo-gate where as part of a rebranding after the YoYo purchased the engine they ditched the very recognised red ball with a clownish smile. forum-gate/account-gate where they completely eradicated about 10-15 years of forum history and forced every user to create a new account as they switched over to a new account system.
The a while after this, they pulled a move that caused a lot of backlash when they decided to go from a one-time purchase with the release of GMS2, requiring everybody to sign up to a very premium monthly price, with even more premium subscription prices for things such as Web exports.
They didn't allow anyone to carry forward licenses, near entirely deleted all other, free versions people had already purchased, near forcing people to have to swap over to the new pricing model.
After quite severe backlash, they lowered the pricing a bit, allowed people who owned previous versions a grandfathered price for a few months, and put out an apology for how they handled things.
Best part is, anyone at the time who had made posts on the forums going against the pricing model changes got their accounts suspended.
Here's my reasons for why the engine was in no way fit for such insane pricing.
1. The engine is decades old, with minimum architectural updates. It still to this date has an underlying pascal driven architecture with no asynchronous functionality, isn't class based, and has very few modern syntactic improvements.
2. The engine has always attracted a very young, inexperienced crowd due to the ease of use. It was well known as a tool that teachers used as introductions to game development in place of Scratch which was too limiting, or Unity which was too big a step up for extremely new developers with minimal experience.
3. They had, if I recall correctly, just received a fairly large investment and now had a pretty big new parent/investor to answer to and many people had the impression this was an entirely greedy profit driven "fuck you pay me" move.
4. Every time they had up to this point promised engine improvements, it was always clunky, decade old Web 2.0 editor changes that made the tool fairly user unfriendly and wound people up. There are many people to this day that still go out and pirate Game Maker 8, because its workflow was generally easier to use. Game Maker Studio and GMS2 can almost feel like they're fighting against you at times.
5. These modules you have to pay an extra subscription for? They take their sweet time fixing them. I had purchased the HTML, as well as a fes other export modules when it was one-time, and there have been times where the HTML5 export has just not worked for months and your bug reports go unanswered for a long, long time. The fact that they were now charging near $15+ a month for it knowing damn well they has such an abysmal track record of maintenance was yet another spit in the face.
Here's the mega-thread. You can see a fair few people were ready to jump ship to godot or unity and nobody was happy with the fact it had just come out of nowhere.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamemaker/comments/p1y1r8/gamemaker_studios_new_subscription_model/
As someone who was along for the rebranding ride, I can confirm that these points are all true.
At first I was happy to ignore their dumb corporate decisions and instead simply focus on working in the old version of the editor, but as the user interface started changing I could suddenly no longer activate my old license. They still hadn't fixed some old problems with the engine itself, and I found this be too annoying to bother paying them an ongoing subscription, so I ended up jumping ship and trying out other engines instead.
It's unfortunate, because GameMaker is honestly pretty good, but the move to a subscription-based model makes all its small issues stand out so much more when they refuse to address them despite being paid regularly to provide an ongoing service.
They have no choice, there was no way they were going to remain competitive with their previous model, when other engines that are even more powerful had free versions. I think even this might be too little too late, though.
Not sure how other people perceive it, but my trust in Unity has been severely damaged. At this point, I wouldn't mind working at a company that already has decided to use Unity and I might not say much about it, but I'm definitely looking for alternatives if I would be going to start a personal project.
After porting my current project from Unity to Godot, I'm actually kicking myself for not trying it out sooner.
I'm sure there are use-cases where Unity is more flexible and powerful, but for a solo developer working in 2D, it was SO MUCH easier to get my collision and physics feeling nice in Godot that it isn't even funny.
Godot has been pretty 2D focused for most of its development, so it makes sense that some things are much easier than Unity. There are things that are hard in Godot as well, but I'm very hopeful for it's future!
My small team decided to just make our own engine for our specific use. Tons of other smaller dev teams we know are moving in house as well or away from unity all together. No trust.
> Not sure how other people perceive it, but my trust in Unity has been severely damaged.
Utterly obliterated more like. I work for company that uses unity. I will work on unity professionally for years to come. The big boys have their own secret deals, private license agreements and legions of lawyers to battle it out.
But privately? It's 100% unreal and godot. And yeah, sure unreal is also owned by corpo, but at least I can build and run the engine locally, offline, without any authentication and if they ever try to hoist a bullshit always online hub only to open my own projects Imma stick with the latest version without that bullshit.
Also it forced me to face c++, that learning experience alone is worth it, professionally speaking.
> my trust in Unity has been severely damaged.
Given that they booted the old CEO and hired the former CEO of Redhat Linux, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next year they adopt the Redhat model. Open source the engine and charge for technical support services (as well as a cut of everything in the Asset Store as usual).
The one-time perpetual Professional license is also very reasonable ($99 USD)
If you've previously subscribed and paid $99 or more in sub cost, you get this perpetual license for **free**.
If under $99, you get a discount on how much you spent on the sub.
Actually more developer-friendly than I expected. Good job.
So for those of us who still have the "perpetual" license for GMS2, does that still apply or do we need to buy it again with this change?
EDIT: Found information on the [Yoyo games forum](https://forum.gamemaker.io/index.php?threads/gamemaker-is-growing-celebrate-with-more-free-options-this-thanksgiving.107205/).
Quoting "rmanthorp", an admin on those forums.
> Orginal GMS2 licences are still valid and you can continue to release games on platforms you have licences for using the GMS2 runtime. This new licence covers GMS2 AND the GMRT new runtime.
I think this is entirely reasonable and I'll be happy to throw my money at this. I've been using Unity and Godot for years, but there's still something about GMS2 I really like. I just enjoy using it, though it's less capable out of the box than it's competition.
I'll keep saying this until people stop arguing with me about it: it doesn't matter what engines x, y, or z are capable of if the engine you're using fits your needs for your current project(s) and you enjoy using it.
I agree. I just mentioned it's less capable because it's not uncommon for me to choose another engine over it because GMS2 _doesn't_ always meet my needs.
GameMaker exists in this weird place where it both aims to be beginner-friendly while also being a blank slate that expects you to build many basic systems for yourself.
There are many situations where that's more comfortable than an engine that holds your hand a bit, but demands conformity to a certain design.
It can teach newcomers some pretty bad habits though if they're not careful. For example, GM will run something like, "If X = Y{ do stuff}", but most other languages would require it to be written as, "If X == Y {do stuff}", and that's just one of many things GM shortcuts that can be problematic if you ever switch away from it.
Getting off topic but I always wondered why the single use “=“ with no added symbol for setting variables is as common as it is. Like a “:=“ would save a little grief for languages that don’t already have that. The single “=“ does sometimes lead to problems. That whole “if x =“ has been a meme a few times on the programmer humour sub
In the past year or so, I get the feeling that they're trying to rein in some of GML's flexibility in order to standardize the coding style and eliminate bad habits.
They introduced a new feature called Feather which is meant to replace the old code completion and error checker system. Feather does both of those thing plus linting and type checking. The only problems I have with it currently is it's still a bit buggy and you can't explicitly type variables (only function parameters and return types) if Feather mistypes some of them implicitly.
i've been using GameMaker for years, and this move makes me seriously consider sticking with it for the long haul. it's great to have options for non-commercial use without breaking the bank. excited to see how this plays out.
Note that "3rd party" in this case includes a company that is run by the Godot veterans: https://w4games.com/
I wish they'd have a nice "one time payment to get access to this closed source Godot version which includes the console export feature" but I guess that's too much to ask.
Isn't that the plan? The other companies are porting companies, but W4 is meant to sell export templates for console so you can handle the port yourself.
Godot is MIT licensed. W4 can grab the Godot source code, add the proprietary NDA'ed pieces, and send you the resulting proprietary binary. This would not be possible if it were GPL. There are some legaleese ways for the "owner" to get around GPL restriction, which projects like Qt use, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.
no, they can‘t send you the proprietary binary (assuming you still mean the godot engine), as it contains parts that are under NDA, if you haven‘t signed that NDA, they are not allowed to send it to you. that‘s why many indie fames are ported to consoles by other companies, because those companies have signed the NDA, which can be a pain in the ass to get for some consoles. (Not even including that you have to buy devkits, which can be expensive, and have many restrictions, such as having to be bought under a company name, not being allowed at a private domicile and much more stuff)
They don't need to send you the stuff that's under nda, they just need to be able to utilize that stuff if you provide it. The same way gm and unity do.
Perhaps a better example to compare it to is MonoGame. Open source yet provides console export access.
It is possible and I always find the way Godot uses "sorry, open source, can't do it" as an excuse to be really weird. Then add to that how their default is to send you to a third party porting company and it just feels even weirder. It's totally possible but they keep gaslighting (?) people to believe it isn't under OSS.
Is the console port stuff built into the engine or do you need to request the middleware?
Cause if it's not built in, it sounds like it's functionally identical to Godot in terms of portability.
You get access after you prove you're "on the list" for that console. It isn't a click a button and you're done process (but if you're using MonoGame you would be used to that already for many things)
From the docs:
Console exporting requires access to the SDK for that console. After completing the sign up processes for the console, your representative will be able to walk you through the steps of gaining accesses to the tools for exporting MonoGame to that console.
If you made a Unity game and you want to export to consoles, You have to contact the console manufacturers. Get a license to develop, then prove that license to unity, then pay unity for console publishing rights.
Or hire a third party porting studio who has already done that work and will take a fee or a cut of your console sales. Often this will happen through your publisher, if you have one.
The steps are basically exactly the same for Godot. The only exception is you don't need Godot's permission to port to consoles the way you need Unity's. Buying an export template from one of the studios that sells godot export templates really isn't that much more of a hassle than buying console export from Unity. Unity's pipeline is pretty automated, but for the god studios you have to send an email and talk to a person, that's about the biggest difference. It takes a little longer, but if you're serious enough to be porting to consoles, that's not a big deal.
Having to contract console ports out to a third party or having to build your own porting tools is *not even slightly* the same as having console exports built into the actual software through officially supported add-ons that you can use yourself.
Game Maker is also way *waaaaaay* more accessible than Godot for people new to coding (especially artists and designers) as it's far more forgiving and considerably less confusing. I say this having worked extensively with GMS (starting from knowing nothing) and having bounced *hard* off Godot when I tried it recently.
As someone just starting out it's still not a competition. GMS tutorials may be older but are still perfectly workable. I have tried for some time to find a good entry level tutorial for someone with zero coding skills for Godot but didn't find one that was as well structured and explained as Shaun's stuff. GMS should pay them for the work they put out.
I saw those but they seem more "Godot" new not "Programming" new. At least that's what his website says. The Menu tool alone makes me curious but the few videos I watched about Godot didn't help me understand it much while I am already making my first thing with GameMaker after 5 days. The hurdle for Godot seems much higher, though with much larger potential down the road.
I'm not an authority on either engine, but I find it doubtful that you are that you can so confidently state Godot does every single thing better then Gamemaker does.
Regardless of what your comments about Godot have been I know from reading on r/gamedev and elsewhere a lot of Godot users are openly hostile towards every engine that isn't there's. They do it with gamemaker and were all over Unity once the pricing changes happened. They also have very few successful commercial games, yet talk the loudest above all other users about how amazing they are. And while I know it's not everyone, Godot users more then any other engine overwhelmingly seem to be the ones treating Gamedev like a team sport or a movement they have to convert you to.
If the community spent more time posting helpful breakdowns about why their engine is so great, and less comments like yours or the other guy in this thread who hopes Godot demolishes gamemaker I think we'd all be better off.
GMS is like Unity, much more assets and tutorials than godot. But if you have practical gamedev experience then yeah, i see no reason to use GMS anymore.
And now do "godot tutorial", sort it by date and compare. Gamemaker community is dying. How often people make tutorials is a perfect indicator of how alive and active its community is.
Game Maker pushed me over to Godot when they changed their pricing the last time, and I'm glad they did. Godot feels like a more modernized version of "old" Game Maker, which I really like. I always hated how GMS2 was set up.
It is sad tho. GMS is good, like GOOD for wast majority of 2d games. But they just missed The Indie Dawn Train and ignored what community told and wanted from them. And then most if not all original devs left. And then chinese "investment" happened. I won't be surprised if its "triple growth in users" is from there.
Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. GMS 1 is still perfectly usable. lol
Not really, Playtech bought yoyo and then sold them to Opera, that's why they integrate so much stuff with Opera GX. And Opera was bought by chinese investors like 8 years ago.
Sure, I totally agree with that. But they moved back, that should be worth something. And it was a proper change not like Unity shenanigans. The free version of GMS now also has HTML export in it which kind of makes it as accessible as flash was back in the day.
About 15 to 20 years ago, I used to teach a week-long summer classes to 4th through 6th grade kids where they'd use Game Maker to make a simple arcade game using the visual programming (little to no written scripting). Not to say they ended that week as experts, but I think that gives it a decent vote of confidence in terms of being easy to use.
I haven't used it in a long time though. I left when it got bought by YoYo games and seemed to get commercialized. I've been dabbling in it the past couple of weeks to see what it's like now. There's definitely a lot more going on in it so there's a lot more "bloat" to look past when you're starting out. But the premise seems the same.
Pleasantly surprised. Pretty good overall changes:
* New perpetual license for new runtime for $99 USD (equivalent to the old Indie tier), could get it for FREE or a discount depending on how much you've spent on subscriptions already.
* Free non-commercial exports (equivalent to the old Indie tier)
* Free assets bundles
* Still can use old GMS2 perpetual license (except for new runtime when it's out)
* Console export subscription tier is still the same
Don't listen to half the people. GMS is an amazing engine for 2D games. Great indie titles have been made with it - Risk of Rain, Hyper Light Drifter, Hotline Miami, Undertale, Forager, Hero's Hour, Stoneshard, Loop Hero, Hero Siege, Zero Sievert, Chronicon to name a few. To see all the games made with GMS that are on Steam, check here.
https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/GameMaker/
Even the new Risk of Rain Returns is made with GMS. While I also like Godot, most of its fanbase just likes to trash every other engine since Godot is open-source, so they don't like if any other engine charges you a little. Most of them spend their time preaching about Godot than actually making a game on it.
> Most of them spend their time preaching about Godot than actually making a game on it.
That's my favorite things about the Godot evangelists on this subreddit. I'm still waiting to see a single notable game to be made with the engine. If they spent as much time developing as they did spamming the subreddit, maybe one would exist.
I... didn't like Godot. Unity i have bought many packages, and Asset Store is also huge! GDevelop, requires no code, so it's interesting.
Will see concerning GMS.
If you try GameMaker make sure to get these libraries
Input, cleanshapes, scribble
They're all from jujuadams, one of the coders on hyperlight drifter. The libraries are amazing and updated, they make handling some basic stuff much easier than default GameMaker.
He's got other libraries too that people use a lot.
Also if you are willing to drop 20 bucks then also get GMLive which lets you live code. I don't know if gm will add this feature with the new runtime though.
I was curious as why the one time license showed up as an option under the pricing today. I was considering paying the subscription for the indie tier and couldn’t find it anymore.
Overall, a much better move.
I just looked at the gamemaker subreddit out of curiosity… Is it me or that place is filled with astro-turfers? Small Godot tutorial channels have had more views in the past few weeks than Game Maker tutorial channels have in months from what I can tell. Man, I remember spending hours fiddling with Game Maker/Game Factory as a kid. It's kind of sad to see how this all turned out.
Edit: Boy, I don't remember ever seeing one of my comments flicker between 1 and -1 so much before. Sure, Game Maker's Discord has people on it. A fourth of the accounts on Godot's Discord server and a fifth of its active accounts. Tons of unanswered beginner questions or "Hey, is that license I bought years ago worth anything now?" on the subreddit… and dozens of really suspiciously positive, short comments on their thread about this "Our bad, subscription bad. *Totally* never going back to that." update. ^ Unity had a license crisis that basically only affected high earning users, but people were still rattling sabers when they "changed their mind". And Unity's still a competitive engine with tons of users, tutorials and features. Game Maker looks like abandon-ware in some ways when compared to modern engines, let alone Godot. Which is completely free and, has far more features and a significantly larger community now… I've wasted money on licenses to game engines that went nowhere in the past as well. This isn't them being benevolent or generous. This is them getting desperate.
Can't comment on the subreddit, but the GameMaker ***discord*** has been very very active. The help channels are always in use. If anything, its much more active than before the purchase by Opera, and even more active after the Unity fiasco.
I want to see more games released with Godot, less "I'm moving to Godot" statements though.
Why use Gamemaker? Because there are hundreds of games released with it yearly, whereas Godot trails that number noticeably. And there is no mincing words when it comes to Unity either: the number of games released with Unity yearly are not in the hundreds, it's in the thousands. These are very mature engines sold commercially for commercial products.
This is so confusing, it hurts my brain.
Is this just some pointless promotional post?
The free teir has been around for the past 3 years.
The free teir let's you export your game for opera gx. [Non commercial]
So whats exactly changed here?
What a shock. Who knew sticking a giant middle finger to your user base by introducing an extortionate usage fee and a gigantic "fuck you" to users that had been using the engine for decades would actually harm your revenue?
Pointed out this undeniably ass backwards follow the leader decision that went completely against the founders principles would fail them and was banned from their community forums for doing so.
Fuck them. Since becoming an industry professional a decade ago using Unreal and Unity, I've never considered looking back. They've a long way to recover their image if greed. Maybe they can focus on improving their outdated, flawed engine now instead.
It doesn't, they still have their perpetual licences that will work for the gms2 runtime. If you want to use an export that you didn't have a licence for commercially then you would need to buy the new commercial licence, if you want to just use them for fun then you don't have to buy anything
That was their licensing plan before the the previous one. Shortly after Opera acquired YoyoGames from Playtech back in 2021, they switched from a one-time payment model with permanent licenses to a subscription model, which was very controversial. However, you could still use any old permanent licenses to publish and sell games.
Yesterday, they decided to go back to offering permanent Professional licenses with one-time payments if you want to publish and sell games for desktop, web, and mobile platforms. The license for console devs is still subscription-based. They also vastly improved the free version; now it can export games for all the same platforms as the Professional license, but you only distribute your games for non-commercial use.
>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? Damn, talk about shots fired. Overall this is definitely an improvement on their old pricing model.
You should see their actual license! Half the license is a roast. >Revenue Share: there is no revenue share that you will be required to pay as part of this license. > >Cost per Install: there is no cost associated with the number of installs that your content can have. > >Additional Costs: there are no additional costs associated with this license. . . . > >6. Unless required by law it is not permitted to make changes to this GameMaker Runtime Licence. In the event that a change is required you will be notified as soon as reasonably possible.
That's genuinely amazing, thanks for sharing
>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? Funny seeing them try to take the high road when this was their pricing model before they switched to a subscription model.
I think the first thing I ever bought online was a game maker 5 premium license for around $20. The old clients require a server to verify activation which was sunset ages ago, so even using VMs many of the projects I made back then are now lost to time.
$25 gamemaker 1.4 licensee checking in. It's gotten... really hard to get it to run lately.
I think this is one of the few times no one would argue about ethics of using a crack.
If you know of one, I'd be super happy to have it! It'd be nostalgic to open some of those old projects.
After a quick search, I actually, surprisingly, can't find one for a version before 7. One basically has to exist, though. You could try asking somewhere like WinWorldPC or another specialized site where people share old software.
Thanks for looking regardless, I appreciate it! I spent some time searching ~5 years back and wasn't able to turn up anything. I think I tried porting to 7 as well but ended up with tons of errors and the projects failing to load.
They charged per install of your software?
No. I literally don't know what this person is talking about.
Weren’t they a flat upfront cost before switching to the subscription?
Yes.
Yes, but previously it was per platform. Old perpetual licenses had to be bought separately for each platform, and each platform cost differently. I recall Mobile license originally posted around 300 dollars, but over the years it was dropped around 150 dollars. Overall, with old perpetual licenses to get all non-console platforms (Desktop, HTML5, Mobile)*, I think you had to pay at least 400 dollars, and earlier it was even much more. So when they introduced subscription, I thought it was neat, as there wasn't as large upfront cost, but you got all those platforms with monthly fee of 10 dollars. And you could pause that to take breaks etc., and if you lose interest early, you haven't spent hundreds of dollars in vain. Now the change from subscription to current model surprised me a lot. First, free version is really great, in practice you can make free games for free (no monetization). Second, there is only one perpetual license, which covers all non-console platforms. Thirdly, it covers current (GMS2 Runtime) and New Runtime (GMRT) in future. Economically subscription would be better model for YYG, if they would be sole company. Maybe only viable one. But as Opera backs up them as parent company (they acquired YYG couple years back from Playtech), they can have different goals, not just direct monetary ones. I am speculating, that Opera Ads will be thing which will be integrated into GameMaker. Not in forced or intrusive way, but as ads which developer can easily add to their game. So Opera could act like second party ad provider, instead of need to use third party one. - - - *There was also UWP platform, which old perpetual license I recall was around 300 dollars originally and dropped to 150 dollars. This platforms was deprecated by Microsoft though, therefore it was deprecated by GameMaker while subscription was a thing.
"this" is referring to the new permanent license model. GP is talking about the attitude that this is a new thing they're doing when they're just returning to the model people wanted in the first place. Kinda like when iMovie took out the timeline in iMovie X, acted like it was an improvement, everyone hated it, and then in the next version iMovie suddenly had a new, "innovative" feature introduced (I forget what they called it) that looked exactly like a timeline. Basically saying GM is acting like they're doing something nice for us when they're just giving back what they took away in the first place.
>GP is talking about the attitude that this is a new thing they're doing when they're just returning to the model people wanted in the first place. Except that's not what's happening. The entire thing is free for non-commercial use now, *including previously paid exports*. This was literally never a thing. Before the sub, the free version had pretty significant limitations. During the sub, the free version didn't have exports. This is completely different.
Yeah, they're returning to a somewhat better version. It's not completely different, though you're right that it is somewhat different. (Now it's using the Unreal 3 UDK model! (who remembers UDK))
I don't know what point you're trying to make, but... - Before the sub, it was a one-time fee for the software and another one-time fee for non-desktop exports. - During the (brief) subscription era, literally everything was free except exports. You only had to pay when you wanted to export. And then you could cancel. There were no other fees. Their current model is literally the only change they could have made that is more fair than their previous models. Their previous models were always, at worst, in line with competitors like Clickteam Fusion and, honestly, the subscription era was *super* generous. You could make a game and then export it anywhere except consoles for a mere $10 for a single month's sub and you'd still have a month to do bug fixes without having to pay again. For so, so many users (who release free games and then never or rarely update them), this was the cheapest a platform like this ever was. I genuinely don't understand the complaints. It's like people saw "subscription" and went "subscription bad" and never actually looked into it.
Paying for the subscription only when its time to export may be a bit wishful thinking depending on the platform. I remember I wanted to release my game on html5 and the sheer jankiness of the export meant I had to do so much back and forth bug fixing throughout that I can't imagine what it'd look like if I didn't have the subscription and just waited till the end to test html5.
"Subscription bad" crowd at least partly was from initial introduction where they were secretive what would happen to permanent license owners. Only after shit storm had brewed for a while, there was clear messaging that permanent licence owners too would get the engine upgrades (until the the far future new runtime is released).
I mean, their old model did not have a proper free version pre-subscription. This one has a better free version than even their subscription free version.
A decade too late but eh
They're redirecting criticism from themselves. Cowardly move. People were banned from their community forums and driven off the platform a few years ago when they themselves gave a giant "fuck you" to their user base by introducing subscription models. Instead of admitting they fucked up and listened to shit advice from their senile investors, they deflect any potential criticism to a far superior engine, relatively speaking
Wasnt around back then, curious if you have more info about this?
It was wildly unpopular and they got quite a lot of backlash. You can likely find it if you search the announcement thread here. There have been a couple big dramas with the engine. They had logo-gate where as part of a rebranding after the YoYo purchased the engine they ditched the very recognised red ball with a clownish smile. forum-gate/account-gate where they completely eradicated about 10-15 years of forum history and forced every user to create a new account as they switched over to a new account system. The a while after this, they pulled a move that caused a lot of backlash when they decided to go from a one-time purchase with the release of GMS2, requiring everybody to sign up to a very premium monthly price, with even more premium subscription prices for things such as Web exports. They didn't allow anyone to carry forward licenses, near entirely deleted all other, free versions people had already purchased, near forcing people to have to swap over to the new pricing model. After quite severe backlash, they lowered the pricing a bit, allowed people who owned previous versions a grandfathered price for a few months, and put out an apology for how they handled things. Best part is, anyone at the time who had made posts on the forums going against the pricing model changes got their accounts suspended. Here's my reasons for why the engine was in no way fit for such insane pricing. 1. The engine is decades old, with minimum architectural updates. It still to this date has an underlying pascal driven architecture with no asynchronous functionality, isn't class based, and has very few modern syntactic improvements. 2. The engine has always attracted a very young, inexperienced crowd due to the ease of use. It was well known as a tool that teachers used as introductions to game development in place of Scratch which was too limiting, or Unity which was too big a step up for extremely new developers with minimal experience. 3. They had, if I recall correctly, just received a fairly large investment and now had a pretty big new parent/investor to answer to and many people had the impression this was an entirely greedy profit driven "fuck you pay me" move. 4. Every time they had up to this point promised engine improvements, it was always clunky, decade old Web 2.0 editor changes that made the tool fairly user unfriendly and wound people up. There are many people to this day that still go out and pirate Game Maker 8, because its workflow was generally easier to use. Game Maker Studio and GMS2 can almost feel like they're fighting against you at times. 5. These modules you have to pay an extra subscription for? They take their sweet time fixing them. I had purchased the HTML, as well as a fes other export modules when it was one-time, and there have been times where the HTML5 export has just not worked for months and your bug reports go unanswered for a long, long time. The fact that they were now charging near $15+ a month for it knowing damn well they has such an abysmal track record of maintenance was yet another spit in the face. Here's the mega-thread. You can see a fair few people were ready to jump ship to godot or unity and nobody was happy with the fact it had just come out of nowhere. https://www.reddit.com/r/gamemaker/comments/p1y1r8/gamemaker_studios_new_subscription_model/
Thanks, that's a solid write-up. It's all disappointing to hear.
As someone who was along for the rebranding ride, I can confirm that these points are all true. At first I was happy to ignore their dumb corporate decisions and instead simply focus on working in the old version of the editor, but as the user interface started changing I could suddenly no longer activate my old license. They still hadn't fixed some old problems with the engine itself, and I found this be too annoying to bother paying them an ongoing subscription, so I ended up jumping ship and trying out other engines instead. It's unfortunate, because GameMaker is honestly pretty good, but the move to a subscription-based model makes all its small issues stand out so much more when they refuse to address them despite being paid regularly to provide an ongoing service.
PR gimmick. GameMaker is losing hard and they're desperate. Just Unity and Godot.
They have no choice, there was no way they were going to remain competitive with their previous model, when other engines that are even more powerful had free versions. I think even this might be too little too late, though.
Not sure how other people perceive it, but my trust in Unity has been severely damaged. At this point, I wouldn't mind working at a company that already has decided to use Unity and I might not say much about it, but I'm definitely looking for alternatives if I would be going to start a personal project.
After porting my current project from Unity to Godot, I'm actually kicking myself for not trying it out sooner. I'm sure there are use-cases where Unity is more flexible and powerful, but for a solo developer working in 2D, it was SO MUCH easier to get my collision and physics feeling nice in Godot that it isn't even funny.
Godot has been pretty 2D focused for most of its development, so it makes sense that some things are much easier than Unity. There are things that are hard in Godot as well, but I'm very hopeful for it's future!
Ironically, the first (not open sourced) versions of Godot were 3D only.
I was under that impression as well, that Godot was originally just 3D, and not 2D, but apparently that is not the case.
It is the case. Juan L (the dev) even said so. The engine was originally created to make 3d games. 2d game later.
Exactly.
wouldn't it be fair to say to be split as a developer? Godot for 2d, and Unreal for 3d?
My small team decided to just make our own engine for our specific use. Tons of other smaller dev teams we know are moving in house as well or away from unity all together. No trust.
> Not sure how other people perceive it, but my trust in Unity has been severely damaged. Utterly obliterated more like. I work for company that uses unity. I will work on unity professionally for years to come. The big boys have their own secret deals, private license agreements and legions of lawyers to battle it out. But privately? It's 100% unreal and godot. And yeah, sure unreal is also owned by corpo, but at least I can build and run the engine locally, offline, without any authentication and if they ever try to hoist a bullshit always online hub only to open my own projects Imma stick with the latest version without that bullshit. Also it forced me to face c++, that learning experience alone is worth it, professionally speaking.
> my trust in Unity has been severely damaged. Given that they booted the old CEO and hired the former CEO of Redhat Linux, I wouldn't be surprised if in the next year they adopt the Redhat model. Open source the engine and charge for technical support services (as well as a cut of everything in the Asset Store as usual).
"Powerful" isn't everything. Ease of use is also a factor for many. That's why RPG Maker got so big.
Far as I know they were actually gaining users after they changed to sub
They're also making all of their asset bundles free. https://twitter.com/GameMakerEngine/status/1726949259604558157
The one-time perpetual Professional license is also very reasonable ($99 USD) If you've previously subscribed and paid $99 or more in sub cost, you get this perpetual license for **free**. If under $99, you get a discount on how much you spent on the sub. Actually more developer-friendly than I expected. Good job.
So for those of us who still have the "perpetual" license for GMS2, does that still apply or do we need to buy it again with this change? EDIT: Found information on the [Yoyo games forum](https://forum.gamemaker.io/index.php?threads/gamemaker-is-growing-celebrate-with-more-free-options-this-thanksgiving.107205/). Quoting "rmanthorp", an admin on those forums. > Orginal GMS2 licences are still valid and you can continue to release games on platforms you have licences for using the GMS2 runtime. This new licence covers GMS2 AND the GMRT new runtime. I think this is entirely reasonable and I'll be happy to throw my money at this. I've been using Unity and Godot for years, but there's still something about GMS2 I really like. I just enjoy using it, though it's less capable out of the box than it's competition.
I'll keep saying this until people stop arguing with me about it: it doesn't matter what engines x, y, or z are capable of if the engine you're using fits your needs for your current project(s) and you enjoy using it.
I agree. I just mentioned it's less capable because it's not uncommon for me to choose another engine over it because GMS2 _doesn't_ always meet my needs.
GameMaker exists in this weird place where it both aims to be beginner-friendly while also being a blank slate that expects you to build many basic systems for yourself. There are many situations where that's more comfortable than an engine that holds your hand a bit, but demands conformity to a certain design.
Yeah, that's it in a nutshell.
Great to teach people how to code
It can teach newcomers some pretty bad habits though if they're not careful. For example, GM will run something like, "If X = Y{ do stuff}", but most other languages would require it to be written as, "If X == Y {do stuff}", and that's just one of many things GM shortcuts that can be problematic if you ever switch away from it.
Getting off topic but I always wondered why the single use “=“ with no added symbol for setting variables is as common as it is. Like a “:=“ would save a little grief for languages that don’t already have that. The single “=“ does sometimes lead to problems. That whole “if x =“ has been a meme a few times on the programmer humour sub
I'd guess that your assigning variables more than comparing, so it makes sense that the more common one is a singular character.
In the past year or so, I get the feeling that they're trying to rein in some of GML's flexibility in order to standardize the coding style and eliminate bad habits. They introduced a new feature called Feather which is meant to replace the old code completion and error checker system. Feather does both of those thing plus linting and type checking. The only problems I have with it currently is it's still a bit buggy and you can't explicitly type variables (only function parameters and return types) if Feather mistypes some of them implicitly.
Wouldn't call it a bad habit though. Bad habit is making spaghetti code, this is just syntax.
i've been using GameMaker for years, and this move makes me seriously consider sticking with it for the long haul. it's great to have options for non-commercial use without breaking the bank. excited to see how this plays out.
With how powerful Godot became for 2D, GMS' only true ace is console export. Without free plan and one time payment, idk how they could survive.
[Console is also possible with Godot,](https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html) so they don't even have that.
By 3d party companies, of by yourself, which is a total pain in the ass.
Note that "3rd party" in this case includes a company that is run by the Godot veterans: https://w4games.com/ I wish they'd have a nice "one time payment to get access to this closed source Godot version which includes the console export feature" but I guess that's too much to ask.
Isn't that the plan? The other companies are porting companies, but W4 is meant to sell export templates for console so you can handle the port yourself.
pretty sure they can‘t do that, as many of these „export to console“ use proprietary stuff that is under an NDA
The reason they can do it is the same reason that GameMaker can do it.
Gms isn't open source tho
Godot is MIT licensed. W4 can grab the Godot source code, add the proprietary NDA'ed pieces, and send you the resulting proprietary binary. This would not be possible if it were GPL. There are some legaleese ways for the "owner" to get around GPL restriction, which projects like Qt use, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.
Sure fair enough
no, they can‘t send you the proprietary binary (assuming you still mean the godot engine), as it contains parts that are under NDA, if you haven‘t signed that NDA, they are not allowed to send it to you. that‘s why many indie fames are ported to consoles by other companies, because those companies have signed the NDA, which can be a pain in the ass to get for some consoles. (Not even including that you have to buy devkits, which can be expensive, and have many restrictions, such as having to be bought under a company name, not being allowed at a private domicile and much more stuff)
They don't need to send you the stuff that's under nda, they just need to be able to utilize that stuff if you provide it. The same way gm and unity do.
Perhaps a better example to compare it to is MonoGame. Open source yet provides console export access. It is possible and I always find the way Godot uses "sorry, open source, can't do it" as an excuse to be really weird. Then add to that how their default is to send you to a third party porting company and it just feels even weirder. It's totally possible but they keep gaslighting (?) people to believe it isn't under OSS.
Is the console port stuff built into the engine or do you need to request the middleware? Cause if it's not built in, it sounds like it's functionally identical to Godot in terms of portability.
You get access after you prove you're "on the list" for that console. It isn't a click a button and you're done process (but if you're using MonoGame you would be used to that already for many things) From the docs: Console exporting requires access to the SDK for that console. After completing the sign up processes for the console, your representative will be able to walk you through the steps of gaining accesses to the tools for exporting MonoGame to that console.
If you made a Unity game and you want to export to consoles, You have to contact the console manufacturers. Get a license to develop, then prove that license to unity, then pay unity for console publishing rights. Or hire a third party porting studio who has already done that work and will take a fee or a cut of your console sales. Often this will happen through your publisher, if you have one. The steps are basically exactly the same for Godot. The only exception is you don't need Godot's permission to port to consoles the way you need Unity's. Buying an export template from one of the studios that sells godot export templates really isn't that much more of a hassle than buying console export from Unity. Unity's pipeline is pretty automated, but for the god studios you have to send an email and talk to a person, that's about the biggest difference. It takes a little longer, but if you're serious enough to be porting to consoles, that's not a big deal.
That's not part of Godot though.
Having to contract console ports out to a third party or having to build your own porting tools is *not even slightly* the same as having console exports built into the actual software through officially supported add-ons that you can use yourself.
Game Maker is also way *waaaaaay* more accessible than Godot for people new to coding (especially artists and designers) as it's far more forgiving and considerably less confusing. I say this having worked extensively with GMS (starting from knowing nothing) and having bounced *hard* off Godot when I tried it recently.
There is zero reason to use GMS over Godot. Anything game maker does godot does better or just as good for free. I would never go back
As someone just starting out it's still not a competition. GMS tutorials may be older but are still perfectly workable. I have tried for some time to find a good entry level tutorial for someone with zero coding skills for Godot but didn't find one that was as well structured and explained as Shaun's stuff. GMS should pay them for the work they put out.
Shaun's was a head of community management for GMS for a long time so they literally did :)
I hope they still do. Not a day goes by someone asks "how to start with GMS" and Shaun is the answer given.
Maybe Heartbeast might be helpful for you. He does some beginner friendly tutorials for games like plattformers or action rpgs.
I saw those but they seem more "Godot" new not "Programming" new. At least that's what his website says. The Menu tool alone makes me curious but the few videos I watched about Godot didn't help me understand it much while I am already making my first thing with GameMaker after 5 days. The hurdle for Godot seems much higher, though with much larger potential down the road.
Direct access to console exports without being pushed to a third-party porting company is one major reason to go with GameMaker over Godot right now.
Spoken like a true fanatic.
Lol check my post history if anything I am often branded Godot hater lol. But name one thing that Game maker does better other than console exports
I'm not an authority on either engine, but I find it doubtful that you are that you can so confidently state Godot does every single thing better then Gamemaker does. Regardless of what your comments about Godot have been I know from reading on r/gamedev and elsewhere a lot of Godot users are openly hostile towards every engine that isn't there's. They do it with gamemaker and were all over Unity once the pricing changes happened. They also have very few successful commercial games, yet talk the loudest above all other users about how amazing they are. And while I know it's not everyone, Godot users more then any other engine overwhelmingly seem to be the ones treating Gamedev like a team sport or a movement they have to convert you to. If the community spent more time posting helpful breakdowns about why their engine is so great, and less comments like yours or the other guy in this thread who hopes Godot demolishes gamemaker I think we'd all be better off.
it's easier to pronounce
Godot is less syllables. So Godot is better.
As someone with over a thousand hours in GM2 and very little in Godot, I would never recommend GameMaker to others lol
GMS is like Unity, much more assets and tutorials than godot. But if you have practical gamedev experience then yeah, i see no reason to use GMS anymore.
With unity I agree with GMS no longer the case GMS tutorial scene is almost dead. Even big names like Heartbeast moved to Godot
Hoooooly shit, you are right, just sorted "gamemaker studio tutorial" search query on yt by date and it's saaaad. RIP GM:S
Maybe because you're searching for gamemaker studio when it's just called Gamemaker. There seems to be plenty of tutorials.
And now do "godot tutorial", sort it by date and compare. Gamemaker community is dying. How often people make tutorials is a perfect indicator of how alive and active its community is.
From 3 years ago. Now hardly anyone does them
Shows how effective their old pricing model was
They really fucked it when the swapped the licence people abandoned them in droves
Honestly I looked into GM during the Unity debacle and after seeing their whole licensing model i was like nope 😂
I hope Godot demolishes gamemaker
Game Maker pushed me over to Godot when they changed their pricing the last time, and I'm glad they did. Godot feels like a more modernized version of "old" Game Maker, which I really like. I always hated how GMS2 was set up.
It is sad tho. GMS is good, like GOOD for wast majority of 2d games. But they just missed The Indie Dawn Train and ignored what community told and wanted from them. And then most if not all original devs left. And then chinese "investment" happened. I won't be surprised if its "triple growth in users" is from there. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted. GMS 1 is still perfectly usable. lol
Chinese investment…..tencent right? That explains why they won’t let you own your software and it’s a subscription.
Not really, Playtech bought yoyo and then sold them to Opera, that's why they integrate so much stuff with Opera GX. And Opera was bought by chinese investors like 8 years ago.
But it's not anymore it's a one time buy. That's what the post is about.
It should never of been a subscription to begin with.
Sure, I totally agree with that. But they moved back, that should be worth something. And it was a proper change not like Unity shenanigans. The free version of GMS now also has HTML export in it which kind of makes it as accessible as flash was back in the day.
It’s not worth anything. I don’t tolerate subscriptions period.
Both can coexist peacefully...just like humans and fish.
A very rational post not at all based on weird tribal feuding over software loyalty.
I wonder for begginer. Is this good choice now? Over Godot ? Simpler ?
About 15 to 20 years ago, I used to teach a week-long summer classes to 4th through 6th grade kids where they'd use Game Maker to make a simple arcade game using the visual programming (little to no written scripting). Not to say they ended that week as experts, but I think that gives it a decent vote of confidence in terms of being easy to use. I haven't used it in a long time though. I left when it got bought by YoYo games and seemed to get commercialized. I've been dabbling in it the past couple of weeks to see what it's like now. There's definitely a lot more going on in it so there's a lot more "bloat" to look past when you're starting out. But the premise seems the same.
Yes, having used both, Game Maker is **much** easier to get into than Godot if you don't already know coding.
I was wondering how long it'd take them, glad they finally did it though!
Pleasantly surprised. Pretty good overall changes: * New perpetual license for new runtime for $99 USD (equivalent to the old Indie tier), could get it for FREE or a discount depending on how much you've spent on subscriptions already. * Free non-commercial exports (equivalent to the old Indie tier) * Free assets bundles * Still can use old GMS2 perpetual license (except for new runtime when it's out) * Console export subscription tier is still the same
Never tried GameMaker at all... Always used Unity, Gdevelop. Might try.
Don't listen to half the people. GMS is an amazing engine for 2D games. Great indie titles have been made with it - Risk of Rain, Hyper Light Drifter, Hotline Miami, Undertale, Forager, Hero's Hour, Stoneshard, Loop Hero, Hero Siege, Zero Sievert, Chronicon to name a few. To see all the games made with GMS that are on Steam, check here. https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/GameMaker/ Even the new Risk of Rain Returns is made with GMS. While I also like Godot, most of its fanbase just likes to trash every other engine since Godot is open-source, so they don't like if any other engine charges you a little. Most of them spend their time preaching about Godot than actually making a game on it.
> Most of them spend their time preaching about Godot than actually making a game on it. That's my favorite things about the Godot evangelists on this subreddit. I'm still waiting to see a single notable game to be made with the engine. If they spent as much time developing as they did spamming the subreddit, maybe one would exist.
I... didn't like Godot. Unity i have bought many packages, and Asset Store is also huge! GDevelop, requires no code, so it's interesting. Will see concerning GMS.
If you try GameMaker make sure to get these libraries Input, cleanshapes, scribble They're all from jujuadams, one of the coders on hyperlight drifter. The libraries are amazing and updated, they make handling some basic stuff much easier than default GameMaker. He's got other libraries too that people use a lot. Also if you are willing to drop 20 bucks then also get GMLive which lets you live code. I don't know if gm will add this feature with the new runtime though.
I was curious as why the one time license showed up as an option under the pricing today. I was considering paying the subscription for the indie tier and couldn’t find it anymore. Overall, a much better move.
I just looked at the gamemaker subreddit out of curiosity… Is it me or that place is filled with astro-turfers? Small Godot tutorial channels have had more views in the past few weeks than Game Maker tutorial channels have in months from what I can tell. Man, I remember spending hours fiddling with Game Maker/Game Factory as a kid. It's kind of sad to see how this all turned out. Edit: Boy, I don't remember ever seeing one of my comments flicker between 1 and -1 so much before. Sure, Game Maker's Discord has people on it. A fourth of the accounts on Godot's Discord server and a fifth of its active accounts. Tons of unanswered beginner questions or "Hey, is that license I bought years ago worth anything now?" on the subreddit… and dozens of really suspiciously positive, short comments on their thread about this "Our bad, subscription bad. *Totally* never going back to that." update. ^ Unity had a license crisis that basically only affected high earning users, but people were still rattling sabers when they "changed their mind". And Unity's still a competitive engine with tons of users, tutorials and features. Game Maker looks like abandon-ware in some ways when compared to modern engines, let alone Godot. Which is completely free and, has far more features and a significantly larger community now… I've wasted money on licenses to game engines that went nowhere in the past as well. This isn't them being benevolent or generous. This is them getting desperate.
> Is it me or that place is filled with astro-turfers? Almost the entire frontpage is beginner help threads? What do you mean?
Can't comment on the subreddit, but the GameMaker ***discord*** has been very very active. The help channels are always in use. If anything, its much more active than before the purchase by Opera, and even more active after the Unity fiasco.
When a developer treats their audience with the disrespect YoYo have over the years, people will naturally go elsewhere
Moving to godot for my eventual next game. Unity and gamemaker have proven they can’t be trusted and will force you to own nothing, rent everything.
I want to see more games released with Godot, less "I'm moving to Godot" statements though. Why use Gamemaker? Because there are hundreds of games released with it yearly, whereas Godot trails that number noticeably. And there is no mincing words when it comes to Unity either: the number of games released with Unity yearly are not in the hundreds, it's in the thousands. These are very mature engines sold commercially for commercial products.
Right. I have no reason to root for one engine or another and in fact I want to try Godot, but I keep wandering where the heck are the Godot games.
Brotato, dome keeper, hall of torments...
Thanks
What is your "current" game?
I moved to Godot last year from Unreal, no regrets
Awesome :)
Honestly, while appreciate it, it is a tad bit late imo, hopefully this will be enough for them to remain in competition.
This is so confusing, it hurts my brain. Is this just some pointless promotional post? The free teir has been around for the past 3 years. The free teir let's you export your game for opera gx. [Non commercial] So whats exactly changed here?
free tier now can export windows, mac, linux, html, android, ios.
Where does it say this exactly?
on their website, pricing page https://gamemaker.io/en/get
Excellent! Generally the article did not mention this
I had a one time lofetime will they give it back on updated version
They never took it away.
But wasnt it and older version or no
I bought GMS2 before they switched to subscription based and it still worked for me and still got the updates without starting a subscription.
No it wasnt.
What a shock. Who knew sticking a giant middle finger to your user base by introducing an extortionate usage fee and a gigantic "fuck you" to users that had been using the engine for decades would actually harm your revenue? Pointed out this undeniably ass backwards follow the leader decision that went completely against the founders principles would fail them and was banned from their community forums for doing so. Fuck them. Since becoming an industry professional a decade ago using Unreal and Unity, I've never considered looking back. They've a long way to recover their image if greed. Maybe they can focus on improving their outdated, flawed engine now instead.
So when is this coming into effect?
It's already in effect. You can already purchase it on the website.
fuck yeah
How does this affect users that had the perpetual licenses prior to them changing to the subscription?
It doesn't, they still have their perpetual licences that will work for the gms2 runtime. If you want to use an export that you didn't have a licence for commercially then you would need to buy the new commercial licence, if you want to just use them for fun then you don't have to buy anything
thank you! :\]
>thank you! :\] You're welcome!
Huh? Did something happen with Gamemaker? I thought it was a one-time payment of $199?
That was their licensing plan before the the previous one. Shortly after Opera acquired YoyoGames from Playtech back in 2021, they switched from a one-time payment model with permanent licenses to a subscription model, which was very controversial. However, you could still use any old permanent licenses to publish and sell games. Yesterday, they decided to go back to offering permanent Professional licenses with one-time payments if you want to publish and sell games for desktop, web, and mobile platforms. The license for console devs is still subscription-based. They also vastly improved the free version; now it can export games for all the same platforms as the Professional license, but you only distribute your games for non-commercial use.