GameMaker Studio 2 now uses a subscription model, at least for consoles

This indeed is NOT an intelligent long-term business strategy. Nowadays, all the giants of the market are aiming for indie market, reducing the prices and making monthly plans for regular indie developers who are going to make a game inside their homes. One of the most smart business models belongs to Allegorithmic (substance painter, substance designer developers) who has discovered how to conquer the whole market in a few years.

Everybody with a really limited knowledge of marketing knows well that sometimes reducing the price will boost up your sales (which will lead to a higher income for the company). The way YYG is selling its product makes me think about a financial crisis behind the doors of YYG which makes them think about the current year and not the whole decade.

 

Okay, so I just feel kind of dumb. I guess I should probably realize I'm not even really a developer. I'm really more of a hobbyist. I take back my "fail" statement from earlier. There's obviously somebody who knows more about this stuff than I do that worked it all out.

 

Exactly because console development is "time consuming", the 12 month availability makes no sense. Developers need time to develop their games, test their games, release their games, and then possibly provide future updates for the players. I understand that the high cost is necessary, since the console modules are not being targeted for the average GMS2 user. I have absolutely no complains for the price tag. I don't, however, like the fact that what we buy is not permanent. I'd prefer if the price was even higher, but the product we buy is forever. Right now, it makes more sense for someone who wants to make a new game to use a different engine, like Unity or Unreal Engine 4. They may be harder to use and not so suitable for 2D games, but they're more powerful in terms of 3D and next-gen graphics, something that professional developers (ESPECIALLY console developers) care about a lot. Apart from that, now they're cheaper too AND offer more export options (like the Switch)

Sorry, but this is disappointing.

 

Oh well, so much for my hope of making cheap fun PS4 games. Way too expensive for me. I'll stick to making Vita games...oh...wait, Can't do that at all in GMS2. Really not a hundred percent sure what I wanna do now. Just wanted to produce games for the machines I enjoy gaming on.

 

Side note: You guys should clarify your pricing model on the Get Game Maker page because right now it does not mention subscriptions at all so it makes it look like either all models are subscription-based, or none of them are.

 

why the hell Sony games? They are disgusting.

At least with Xbox is fine and PC is all you need. But Vita...? Oh my god... Someone kill me please...

 

Like many I had an instant "screw this!" gut reaction, but having reflected on it further and thanks to the comments from Mike and Shaun on here and ThylacineStudios over on the subreddit I think I am actually ok with this.

Lets be frank the vast majority of us will never release a console version with any sort of fanfare.

As an indie dev (and a solo one at that) the only way I'll likely ever need the console export is if I have already gained a decent level of success on Steam and want to further that success by porting to console. In that sort of a situation a year or two's subscription to the console modules certainly isn't going to break the bank.

Also if you're reaching that point, then the other engines will likely be taking royalties anyway so its not like you wouldnt be paying if you were using UR4 or Unity. If you're getting to this point and you're not hitting Unity's 200K cap from PC/Mac release then chances are your time would be best spent on Marketing, PR and polish rather than porting to another platform.

 

To judge a price suitable for the market and the future of the company, you must consult with professional marketing experts, not mere programmers... That's what bothers me a lot.

 

Now that I REALLY think about it, I'm actually more concerned about 1.4 sunsetting now and long-term support for my current/upcoming projects on PS4/Vita than I am for GMS 2 stuff. We're a small team and it took us over 2 years to (almost) finish a small but polished game for PS4, and we're going to have to delay launch a few months because by the time its ready to go and get through submission QA, we won't be able to launch (it'll be in the middle of the holiday season chaos).

And we started working on this game in only a year or so after GMS first launched... Most studios take longer than a year or two to make even small commercial indie games...so what does this mean for GMS 2 devs that shell out for console export, only to have GMS 3 roll out in a few years and kill their ability to support current projects?

The speed that this industry moves is INSANE. How are devs of any size meant to keep up, when entirely new versions of the tools they use DROP SUPPORT only a few years after they first exists?

Meanwhile the console publishing process (esp for small indies) is one of the most tedious, time-consuming and glacially-paced processes imaginable.

 

You're an idiot. Leave now.

 

As to those who are "almost finished". I can understand that you've been aiming for a platform for a long time, and if you were heading towards it thinking that it's a cheap (or free) option for you, this can be a body blow. However, I'm afraid the reality is that all exports have to cover their costs. I'd love to be able to make a platform and just release it free - I have after all been trying to do a Raspberry Pi one for about 3 years now. But maintenance costs. A bug in controllers? Someone has to spend time fixing that. An SDK update that changes the whole networking system, someone has to spend weeks updating that. None of this is free, and there simply isn't enough users on console to be able to realistically spread the maintenance costs as we do on other platforms.

Every platform needs to be maintained, they all need updating at some point. You simply can't make a target exporter, release it and never look at it again. if you could, this would never be an issue.

On top of this, as I said above, unless you're a super experienced console developer, you'll need some kind of support to get through Cert. Indie devs tend not to be. Pro devs tend not to be. Only people that port games for a living, and have done so over and over, tend to be. So again, this "support" has to be paid for, we can't have our devs spending days or weeks sometimes helping developers and not getting on with their own work. It has to be paid for.

For indies to have a great game, there are many publishers out there that will shoulder this cost - and perhaps even port it for you, in exchange for a different cut.

Lastly, GMS2 "should" be able to import your 1.4 game and run. In order to get the best from it, you should update and use the new APIs, but it should import and run as-is. What we've been telling developers is if you have a game ready now, release it in 1.4 then upgrade right after. If you're releasing next year, you should consider upgrading prior to that. There is a year left on 1.x - or a little more depending on SDK upgrades, and aside from Vita (which none of us really like losing, but it's just not worth it in the GMS2 time frame), you can port afterwards.

I also don't think it should take "12 months" for a game to be ported from PC to console. Sure if your ONLY making a console game, then yeah. But most indies don't. They make mobile or desktop games and port to console. This should be a much quicker process, so a years license should be fine. And yes, the industry moves quickly - after the 8bit era, it always has. Each generation gets about 4 or 5 years - that's just the way it works.

 

Def understand, yeah. Which is why I'm not totally opposed to the charging/maintenance -- it's just a lot to try to pivot and deal with at once for a smaller team who doesn't have the capital, all while juggling the home stretch of a console dev launch. You're not kidding when you say it's a lot of work and that support is def needed.

After pushing through most of the self-publishing process as an indie on console (I do programming, art,audio AND business dev/marketing), my biggest takeaway has been "Damn, this is exhausting...it'd be great next time to have a publisher handle this nightmare." So that's a good point.

Thanks for the tip RE: 1.4 launch then rapid upgrade to 2. I'm worried that it might break a lot of the wackier,janky systems we cobbled together early in development, but at the very least it doesn't hurt to give it a test run and see what happens. If the launch does well enough financially, and the build survives exporting to GMS2, then it is feasible -albeit with a lot of extra legwork -- that we can salvage things and maintain some kind of support beyond 1.4's sunset.

At the very least, though, it would be really helpful to have a compromise -- an option for a monthly plan. Maybe that's less financially feasible on your end, but it would definitely alleviate the pressure of trying to cover the full expense during year-long periods of console dev down time when our we're in the weeds working on projects well before they're ready to test/rollout.

Thanks for your time, cheers!

 

I think that applies if you are porting your game but making on from scratch is another thing but depends on how elaborate you making it. Afterwards (when starting an new project), you then have to work on a full year on another project to get things done to get those sales going. Then again this is something mostly for big companies would aim for. Definitely not indie but I know lot of indie users would love to aim for home consoles too. Heck Im still waiting for the Nintendo Switch module to finally get on that level of marketing. But I understand the work you guys have to put up on getting this. However, I dunno if it is worth risking now and not later. I see GM better off for PC, Mac, HTML5, and mobile. Home console is something demanding of course but if it gravely affects the progress for the company, I wouldnt consider it yet until the company is financially stable enough to support by all means. Well you know what you are doing so I cant say much about it. The only thing you can do now is see where this lead to. Im still sticking with GMS1.4 and GMS2 for PC, it has always been my prefer program for those areas, including mobile since Im doing those recently for the team. I would still need to switch engines eventually for the lack of Nintendo module but Im still sticking with GM for PC and mobile. Its the easiest route for me to get a great job done sooner.

 

Also remember that UWP on XBox One is a valid development target for doing XBox One Console development

Russell

 

Mike, I hate to say this, but by my experience, that is a blatant lie. I have begged for help with certification of Spoiler Alert on Xbone many times, and even have it from you in writing that such support would have to be paid for out of my own pocket.
In spite of the fact that the game is running on Xbox and just needs some cert help.

If this was something you actually did, then sure, the higher costs makes sense - support is expensive. But...

 

JeffJ - contact us out of this forum for the XBox One help, you should have received that I am not sure what happened there we can and do help all the time with cert problems.

Russell

 

I think the simple fact is that if you make a good enough game then publishers will be chomping at the bit to do all necessary porting for you.

 

Let's face it, $1500/yr is peanuts in the grand scheme of anyone who is qualified to touch this export. Over the same timespan, a contractor would cost that several times over. What I'm concerned about is that the export wouldn't satisfy the support demands of such clientele.

Having a subscription for the console exports puts its users at a unique position regarding their tolerance for showstopper-induced delays. There have been a number of these throughout GMS 1.x's lifetime, each lasting one or more months. A similar bug with the console exports on GMS 2, taking the same amount of time for resolution, would be a grounds for a refund.

It was like yesterday when YoYo broke the play button on the GMS 2 Mac export, then held onto the fix for almost 2 months because it's mixed in with unrelated patches in QA. Do you think that is a good omen for anyone thinking about this export?

When the libpng security bulletin came out, YoYo also held onto the fix until the submission deadline because there was a major Spine update bundled with it. That won't stand on the console export with the additional publishing demands.

Given what's already happened, it's reasonable for current and prospective GMS 2 adopters to suspect the same pace of support on consoles. YoYo should make a clearer statement on what this support is like and have measures for emergency red builds that bypass the regular release cycle.

Console development is hard, and even harder without funding from the vendor. But YoYo can't expect a prospective customer seeking to publish to consoles to appreciate that.

 

Our Console support responds within XX business day (i.e. not weekends) and schedules fixes in for our clients - they get out of band fixes for their needs.

This is a requirement for Console customers... hence the higher cost

Russell

 

Holy "Switch-to-Unity", Batman. This is the price for a year of Unity Pro, paid for in nice $125/mo installments with the option to stop paying and keeping your current version indefinitely after 2 years of payments. For Unity Plus this is over 3 times the yearly cost, same 2 year rule applying.

You want that kind of money? Add Switch Support into the $1500/yr mix. Give us some threading support. Give us better 3D. Until then, sorry to say, you are a severely overpriced Unity Lite no matter how you spin your words and make it sound reasonable.

"Please note: Whilst this is a 12 month licence, it is not a subscription per se and requires you to manually purchase again at the end of your 12 months, as we do not auto-renew for you."

All I can do is laugh at you guys, at this point. I read it as, "We're not guilty: We intentionally set the conditions up perfectly for this guy's certain death. We didn't murder him, per se." When you need to cover your back end by playing word games with your customers, that's when everyone should realize this train has run off its tracks.

 

I appreciate that there is priority service for console clients, but you should clarify the "XX" in your statement. I also hope that you look into adopting the out-of-band workflow for major incidents involving other exports, such as app store takedown warnings or security bulletins.

Without a defined policy on support along the release, the only cost a prospective customer can justify is $0. Please, this isn't ready, think it over.

 

the only thing i don't get is what incentive there is to purchase the Ultimate bundle? it says

but if you really can develop for Xbox One with UWP can't you literally just buy all exports for $1050 upfront and only pay $800 yearly for PS4 instead of spending $1500 every year?

is it just the convenience of one-click-setup-iness instead of whatever steps are needed for the alternative?

 

UWP is a restricted version of XB1 development.

You don't have access to the full system hardware, don't have access to all Xbox Live features and can't submit to the proper Xbox Live Store - you would go on the UWP store.

If your game would work with fine within these limitations then it's a way to get on XB1, but if you not then you need to apply to ID@XBox and use the proper console module.

I think Russell mentioned a while ago about improving the UWP module to support some Xbox Live stuff, but they are just words right now as with a lot of things. *cough* Spine support *cough*

 

Wow. I'm not going to claim I am particularly qualified to do console development (I'm not), but you do realize income has nothing to do with qualifications, right?

 

Why shouldn't income be related to being qualified to do something?

Look, some ways to make money are more expensive than others. With the amount of staffing needed to satisfy console vendor demands, of course income is part of being qualified to head a console export. It's not fair, but anyone who complains about it not being fair should have done their research.

Genuinely qualified people don't complain about privilege or income inequality. They work their way up to acquire the means to do what they want.

 

Exactly why some people are arguing about the feature comparison to competitors that cost the same. It's not always about money, it's sometimes about intelligent choice. When they start taking their paying customers more seriously, maybe then they can justify that cost. I can easily afford it which is why the competitor is now that much more appealing. Stop being elitist.

 

As I said in the first post I made in the thread also. The cost doesn't concern me greatly either ($1500 is less than a weeks wages for me). It is the support and the likes that concern me.

Price could be $10K for all I care. But, once you get to console level and are relying on a third party (YYG) to make sure all of their side is stable and working as advertised, this is where my concern lies. Given the history of "we will fix it if there is a demand for it". We are paying decent money of GMS these days and most of us are multiple repeat customers - of course there is a demand for a 'fix', whatever the problem may be.

If the support isn't there and we can't get something out because of a broken feature, we then have Sony and Microsoft on our doorstep tapping their watches, pointing the finger at us. In the meantime we are screwed until YYG decides whether they wan't to investigate a fix or not.

 

The price maybe too expensive, it would make the new "game maker" give up choosing GameMaker if they want to export PS4 or Xbox.
Then, the users of Gamemaker would be less and less. It's the beginning of the vicious cycle.

 

@Mike: why are these exports being offered as twelve month chunks instead of being offered monthly like Unity?

I also think you should offer cheaper (or free) plans to people making less than certain amounts of money with their game, like Unity does. I understand *someone* needs to pay for them, and you're counting on the rare few big fish that actually use GM to do that, hence the high price. That said, these prices make no sense for any of the little fish in your pond, and I think you're going to scare all of them away into friendlier ponds, where they'll then grow into big fish.

Unity, Unreal, Photoshop, and most other "pro" programs grow their userbases by enticing amateurs to join their ranks, and banking on them to become bigger customers later. I really think you guys are going to hurt GM by effectively telling 99% of your users to **** off to Unity if they want to see their game running on consoles without selling their car.

This whole thread makes me sad. Makes me feel like YoYo is in much more desperate straits than I thought they were. ):

 

Clearly being a skilled professional in a well-paid field such as programming typically comes with high income, but there are all manner of scenarios in which someone with little to no money could absolutely have equivalent skills (never mind that learning by doing can *make* someone qualified): You might choose to work in a different field that does not pay well at all but is rewarding in other ways, while making games part-time... or you might have saved a bunch of money, quit your job and risked it all to make your dream project (however inadvisable that may be), you might be fresh out of school with top grades and student debt... I could go on. Suffice it to say "real developers have money" is ignorant classist BS. (especially so in the context of a tool that is generally meant to be accessible to everyone)

 

I agree with others, by the way, that if it must be a subscription, make it monthly so you can get it only as and and when you need it instead of being essentially forced to permanently subscribe first to develop and then to maintain and update previous releases.

 

No one is talking about quallifcations in a literal sense, in that context. It's more akin to whether someone ticks all the boxes or not. And if they don't have the financial means to meet the minimum expectations of the console platform holder then they quite simply do not tick all the boxes. And another way of saying that is "They do not meet the qualification do x". In such contexts, the word qualification does not mean literally what skills they have, it means something more like what prerequisites do they fulfil.

 

Just cause you earn $1500 in a week doesn't mean every indie game developer earns $1500 in a week.

 

What's your point? I'm not the one moaning about the price. Nor am I the one setting the price.

 

Stop thinking only about yourself. You don't know what life every game developer lives, their social status, how much they can spare for a console port...
Even if you're gonna pull the "serious developers" card, why do you think they should risk it? You don't think they're under high pressure when paying $1500 per year already? How do you know it'll pay off? I only know a few GM games that are actually successful and can generate enough revenue to support the developers full time.

Why can I get GMS2 with Win, Mac and Ubuntu for $60 but to port to consoles I need to pay 25x that Per year.

 

That's life. You purchase what you can afford.

Do you think I cry every time someone drives past me in a Ferrari? Burst in to tears and scream "Why dear God? Why?!?".

Don't ask me? How would I know the answer for that? I'm not the one setting the price.

Why I am getting the blame for something that is not in my control whatsoever is hilarious. I am not even in the same hemisphere as Dundee, Scotland.

 

This was a business decision by upper management, I can 't say more than that I'm afraid. We're always looking different plans and how they can evolve, so it may change in future, but for now.... this is what has been chosen.

It's impossible to track income from developers as they can sell their games anywhere at at price, so the only thing you can track is the number of plays. This would require forcing everyone to leave runtime analytics on, and make the erroneous assumption that every play, from each device is a separate paid game, at a set amount. This is obviously not realistic, and on top of this, you have to be prepared to sue whoever refuses to grant access to accounts - even when the terms of use are clear, some will just refuse. Then what? This is a massive legal undertaking, and that's not assuming mass revolt where everyone just decides not to. Not only do we not have the resources for this, but it screws the rest of our users by forcing on the analytics, which closes off certain markets (like Education, or kids), it would also probably end up running at a loss since I suspect the legal bills would FAR outweigh the amount you'd ever get back.

In reality, I suspect places like Unity will only ever go after large companies if they make a big game - one that everyone can see is making money, then they'll consider it a target. If an indie ever hits it big and gets a hit, they'll become a target too, but otherwise, how can they possibly know? What if your game did in-app purchase via your own extensions? It's be impossible to know how much was sold.

The problems with this kind of model is why we've never adopted it, it's a potential minefield of costs and legal nightmares.


Also, personally I believe consoles is something to aspire to. If you can't currently afford it - and it is a lot more then desktop, then release on cheaper platforms first, save, and port.

 

I thought this was already answered earlier in this thread? Low number of users for those exports, who also have high support requirements. High costs + less people to spread those costs across = higher costs per license.

 

But what if its only for one game Im working on and after its done, I wont be exporting to any console for few years from now?

 

Making games is a long process, and you can't just skip to the end of it without doing the work. If that work means you have to save up, then as I said before, make a little money on anther platform first. If you don't think you can sell $800 on mobile or desktop, then I'd question going onto console in the first place.

If you game "requires" console - a party game or something like this, then approach a publisher and they can help.

 

I'm genuinely confused about how GM 2 is gonna compete in the market with pricing like this. Tool for beginners and hobbyists with cost tailored to industry professionals. Sure, current console developers greenlit the pricing, similarly how some of the devs suggested 5000$ as Steam Direct fee. Difference is, that Valve went with an option affordable to everyone. Anyway, that's none of my business, I only know for sure, that I won't be switching to GM2 and I can no longer recommend GM after people ask me what I make games with. Feels bad.

Also, 1.* support drops next year? Damn... I have to plan... some things. Anyone knows which month?

 

July 2018

 

Valve deciding on a 100 dollar fee for a highly automated service that will get used a ton is in no way analagous to this situation.

 

Depends on how you look at it. I'm not comparing apples to oranges, just pointing out that setting high price because current established developers are fine with it might not be the right approach. At the very least, it hurts the image, when you put GM "1500$ per year" next to "FREE for all platforms" Unity.

 

Unity free doesn't offer support and therefore is irrelevant to this conversation about the cost of support.

 

@Mike Unity has better customer support, too. At least with Unity we know we can keep supporting our games into the distant future (1.4 shows that is not the case here). At least Unity actually cares about what their customers want (Notice they are not wasting roadmap space talking about updating their image editor. Oh wait, because they didn't waste their time on an image editor to begin with since everyone uses dedicated editors). I think upper managment lost their marbles by trying to use Unity Pro pricing. Is YoYoGames still owned by an online casino? It definitely sounds like it is.

Game Maker's roadmap is laughable at best, and that's after a significant (I guess we can use that word) update to it. Good luck to whoever continues as a Game Maker developer. Tell me when you get anything worth while added, because based on the roadmap you have at least a year of updates you probably won't even notice (Probably longer when you realize development has shifted into "YoYoSpeed"). I hope you get what features you need fast, otherwise they'll drop support for GMS2 soon after you pay the Console fee.

I'll bite. Unity Plus is less than 1/3rd the cost per year and has way more possibilities than Game Maker Studio 2.

 

I'm glad you bit, because I was somewhat baiting that bite. Unity Plus doesn't include support. So is also irrelevant like Unity Free.

I know it didn't start out as a discussion about the cost of providing support, but it really became a discussion about the cost of providing support when Mike cited that as the main reason. I mean we have two choices here. Discuss the cost of providing support, and how we all think YYG could some how lower or spread those costs, or howl at the moon citing examples that are bordering on tangental.

I don't particularly like price changes myself, but its hard to argue against YYG providing a service that developers targeting a particular platform need and want, at a price that is viable for both parties.

 

It does have support. Maybe not, "Let the YoYoRegime hold your hand for you" support, but it has support. Honestly, @JeffJ has a nice little story about the amount of support you actually get from the YoYoRegime. They completely ignored the guy for Console support. The response was, "Sorry, we don't know what happened. We respond within XX business days". The catch? "XX" was literally in the response. (In fact, just scroll up a bit to see it)

I don't think I would want the YoYoRegime personally helping me at any point in the delivery of my products. They're having a hard enough time with their own agenda.

Let's also compare features. Well, let's not. It would take forever. Just put Game Maker Studio back in the kiddy pool on this one.

 

GMS1.x has lasted 5 years, with another year to go. That's a LONG time for a product to last. It's not unreasonable for a new product to come out, and we've make it so that your old projects will keep working in the new project and carry on with that.
We can't support old products forever. Unity does the same, and sometimes those upgrades are even more painful.

Also, it's one thing to criticise pricing strategy, but we do not allow outright flaming on here, so keep to the point or your posts will be removed.

As long as console requests go through the proper channels we prioritise and work with them. I don't handle console or front line support, so I don't know if this is how he tried to get in touch. The whole team work hard to support the product, and your not only slating the product but their hard work.

If you don't want to use GameMaker then don't, it's your choice but enough with the flaming, please keep your rage to yourself.

 

I disagree about calling it irrelevant. It doesn't include "premium" support, as @Posh Indie was referring to, BUT, it does allow you to export to all platforms for free. All Unity plans provide free export to any platform the engine supports.

With that in mind:

Are they no longer doing this just in regards to Game Maker then? I'm not trying to flame here, just want to get a clearer picture of the situation.

In any case, my initial gut reaction has also faded some. I still think there could be better solutions (like purchasing premium support, and letting the use of console exports otherwise be at an "at your own risk" basis, but I digress), but I can see the reasoning behind these decisions. Still enjoy working with GMS2, so I have no plans to stop using it.