Game creation tool GameMaker is now free for non-commercial use

rockpapershotgun.com:

GameMaker, the 2D game creation toolkit, has been used to make everything from Chicory: A Colorful Tale to Gunpoint to the original freeware Spelunky. It's also one of the more accessible ways to make games for beginners, kids and students, thanks to a drag-and-drop interface and forgiving scripting language.

Good news, then: GameMaker is now "free for non-commercial purposes on all non-console platforms" - such as PC.

At the same time, GameMaker are also introducing a new "one-time fee" commercial licence to replace its creator/indie subscription tiers and making all its game asset bundles free. That one-time fee is $100 and it lets you produce and sell games on PC, mobile and browser. If you want to release a game on console, however, you'll need to pay a monthly subscription of $80.

This is, to some degree, a reversion. When I first started using Game Maker around ten years ago, it was a one-time purchase to buy the software for commercial use. The difference is that at that point, it was also a one-time fee to buy the necessary tools to export for a particular console platform. Since then, much has changed, and GameMaker creator's YoYo Games has been bought first by an online gambling company and then by fintech/browser company Opera.

In any case, this seems like an unequivocal good for the games community, and obviously contrasts with how big boy Unity has gone about recent pricing changes. GameMaker's announcement couldn't resist a cheeky dig in that direction. "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?"

You can read more about the changes and about GameMaker in general at the