The big difference between paying for an instrument or sports equipment and paying for software is that there are free alternatives for the software and these free alternatives are even somewhat of a standard in educational environments.
Correct, there are - but the learning curve with those other engines is massively different to that of GameMaker.
The time needed to learn those other engines and achieve similar results goes up massively when compared to GMS2, so the parent would end up spending way more in the extra paid private lessons required to get the child to an equivalent level in the "free" engine, than they would by buying a 12mth Creators Licence for $40, or even a permanent $99 Desktop Licence for that matter.
The university where I've studied game design had classes for Unity, Unreal and GameMaker. And although the GameMaker course was the shortest it was the only (game engine) software the university was paying for.
There is a reason for that and I mentioned it above - those engine have a much higher learning curve than GMS2 and are nowhere near as accesible to new students, especially children who are trying to learn game dev who would need many more lessons in those engines and to gain the same level of proficiency as they would in GMS2 in less than half the time and at much less expense in private lesson fees.
After GMS1.4 Standard Edition was discontinued and there was no way for students to use a free version of GameMaker on their own devices for project work the GameMaker course was cancelled.
I can't comment on the cost of the Educational Licences as I've never looked into it, but they could have easily rolled the cost of a 12mth Creators Licence for each student to register and use at home for the year into the course fees and it would have been almost unnoticable.
I would think that the reason the course was cancelled was because of the Educational Licences that would have been required to run the course, rather than not wanting the students to pay the whopping $39 to be able to do their homework.
We're going OT here anyway as private tutors are not in the same position as real educational establishments anyway, but simply as a hobbyist / home user you can't expect GM to be free just because Unity and Unreal are.
Those engines have thousands of employees and multiple revenue streams which bring in hundreds of millions of dollars every year (
£300m for Unity for example), whether it be AAA studios licencing the engine source code, people paying to attend seminars all over the world, the yearly licence fees from users going over the $100k/$200k revenue limits, royalty cuts, the cut from the very active Asset Stores that have thousands of assets, publishing (ie. Epic with Fortnite) etc, and who knows whatever else they have going on to bring money in.
GMS2 has none of these (other than a marketplace that doesn't even warrant comparison) - it's a one time $99 payment and that's the
entire outlay until the next major version - and that's it, done!
Same with all the other exports other than console, which from what YYG have previously said regarding it are fees passed on from the console manufacturers that were previously covered by Microsoft and Sony and I would hope some additional fees to cover the cost of the continual development and updating of the console SDKs.
To say "Well Unity and Unreal are free and you have to pay for GMS2" just comes off as a naive thing to say when you factor in the differences between the software itself and the companies that develop them.
Isn't this essentially just "I don't believe your experience, instead here's my tangentially related experience"?
Not really, it's me saying that in 20yrs of coaching sports and teaching kids in various subjects including IT and languages that I have never had to deal with a parent who had signed their child up to paid private lessons for
anything, and didn't have the knowledge and/or expectation of a future outlay for equipment / kit / books / software etc if their child showed an interest in the subject and wanted to continue persuing things in their own time as an actual hobby and start taking part in the activity on a regular basis.
It sounds like MileThatcher has personal experience with parents being fussing over paying for software, so not sure why you wouldn't believe it.
I find it hard to believe because I have 20 years of personal experience of the opposite.
As I said earlier I don't want to get into a massive debate on something that has already been decided and been actioned (and this post is already way too long), but I do hope that Miles and other tutors that aren't actual "educational establishments" can work something out that works for both of them as there should be a happy medium in there somewhere which would be a reasonable outcome for both sides - maybe a new licence type or something along those lines, who knows.
YYG has to earn money at the end of the day, and if they don't then the company goes bust and none of us will have an engine left to use.