Agreeing with everyone that is like "nobody would even try to get into GM with a 30 day hard limit", I've used it since the GM5-GM6 transitional period and I didn't make anything good enough for a public release until 2008. I also stuck with the Lite version of GM8 for a
really long period since it fulfilled all my needs, even if the splash screen was unprofessional I felt like I displayed a mark of pride showing fellow Sandbox members what you could accomplish without all those cool advanced features if you just were smart enough. Different days, different use case, but my point is... not everyone is in the target audience for a commercial license, so removing the "babby's first game maker" edition entirely is gonna remove the only thing big swathes of people is interested in.
I mean, look at the selling points of the other engines.
- 3D room editor + native model support (Unity, Godot, Unreal)
- Copypaste C++/C# code from StackOverflow instead of learning a proprietary language (like every one of them)
- Compiled performance (like every one of them)
- Living, properly working asset store (Unity, not sure about others)
- Opensource and free (Godot)
What has GM got?
- Really easy to find by googling
- Fast and easy to make stuff in
- Living, constructive community to help you learn how to use it
As a long-time GMCer I'm worried not only about GM, but also about the GMC... if we stop getting an influx of new random people that just like coding and only get commercial devs that think about the money/time ratio of everything they're doing, the forum will change for the worse.
Also, just as a completely unrelated idea... if there's a need for Yoyo to make more money, how about doing what RPG Maker is doing and start producing tons of high-quality art assets / code extensions and sell those? Both new users that lack the skills/funds to produce custom art and professional indie devs that need to increase throughput could be potential customers. The RPG Maker guys produce these things at a sickening pace, there's already over 250 things and the news feed is completely swamped with new DLC releases all the time... but it's evidently working for them, or they wouldn't keep doing it, right?
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