Gamemaker Reverses Subscription Model

Project Help Game Engines
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Gamemaker has just announced it is stepping away from its subscription model to become completely free to use with a one time $100 license for commercial games. This appears to be an improvement on even its earlier tiered purchase model for those that remember that. This is a very surprising change and one that I personally am very suspicious of because of how good it is.

I feel like I need to find a catch or a downside of some kind to finally relax because companies just don’t do this. They don’t make things more convenient out of the goodness of their hearts. They make things inconvenient on purpose so they can sell you the solution.

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“Why, yes, we did go out of our way to do the conceptual opposite of that shit Unity tried a couple of months ago. How did you know?”
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all our asset bundles will now be free for everyone.

My guess is Opera has finally pressured them to make positive change, that and dunking on Unity is free reputation points. While I don’t encourage brand loyalty, Opera has been on a streak good decisions lately and buying out GameMaker always felt a bit weird at the time, maybe this was their plan all along?

Whatever the reason, this is great for the indie game dev scene, giving Godot and others some more competition should only mean further improvements in the engines. It’s fair to take this with a grain of salt, but being free for non-commercial use isn’t an offer to be refused. Plus, if they were ever to re-reverse back onto a subscription model I’d imagine the backlash and damage to their reputation would be immense.

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So the Opera Internet browser company brought out the one for Game Maker? When did that happen?

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A quick search shows the purchase went through in 2021.