Recently there’s been so much controversy surrounding YoYo Games, Opera and GameMaker, that I’ve gotten to where I’ll either feel angry about the changes and things “I” don’t like, or I’ll just keep them to myself and “hope” they will get better. Or worse, just ignore and say, Well, GMS2 is all I know, so
I have to use it.
But, because of all the controversy and the roller coaster emotions, it’s not mentally worth it for me to continue to worry about what sort of features I will still be able to get, or if I will suddenly be locked out of my $300 “permanent” purchase, which is made clear, that it will
not be permanent forever.
I think I’m actually done with GameMaker Studio 2, for this very reason. There might be some actually cool and useful features in the future. But currently, all of this is too much to handle at the moment. As instead of waiting and hoping for new better tools and trying to hang on as long as I can without subscribing, I would rather be learning a new engine with all of the time I have spent waiting for things to change.
This is something I would rather not do. As I have numerous projects started in GameMaker and would like to finish them. I have a game that I had announced back in 2019 that is still in the beginning stages and not complete because I’ve been on the roller coaster of emotions of if I really should continue using GameMaker Studio 2.
Then there was the big discussion about the Ultimate License and why it should be permanent.
Then shortly after YoYo Games lowered their costs and changed to subscription only, which started the roller coaster again. But after cooling off and thinking about it, I convinced myself that even though I don’t like the way GameMaker Studio 2 is going, I will continue using because it’s the game engine I’m experienced at. It was also taking so long to “wait and see” how GameMaker was going to be, that I didn’t even work on the above game project.
Even if I decided to keep using GameMaker Studio 2 just for PC games, as said above, how long would I get to keep my permanent license before being locked out do to it being unsupported and having to subscribe to get access to new versions and features?
There is also too many un answered questions for permanent license holders and way to much speculation.
I’m not wanting to bring up another dispute about subscription pricing, but on top of all of the controversy and un answered questions, this is also why I won’t continue to use GameMaker Studio 2.
If this sort of thing was going on with a free engine based on royalty (Unreal, Unity, etc.), I wouldn’t mind it much, because I don’t have to pay anything to use or export in those game engines. And if I chose not to use that engine anymore, it wouldn’t be a financial burden, since I didn’t meet any thresholds or paid any royalties.
I could export a PC game to sell on Steam without having to subscribe either monthly or yearly or be locked into using a browser I don’t want to use to export a web game to.
Eventually, people who use Unreal or Unity, would need to pay. But that requirement is a long ways off and hobbyists probably won’t be making over $100k or 1 million in their first year or first game. I’m not a hobbyist, but for people who work on games off and on, having a subscription is an unnecessary cost.
At least when people reach Unreal or Unity’s threshold, they have money already earned to pay the cost with. I think that is the main problem with how the GameMaker Studio 2 subscription works. If it was threshold based, it would be more friendly towards hobbyist or part time game developers. But the fact that new users have to pay either $10 a month or $100 a year just for PC exports is not cost effective.
To the people who say:
“You don’t have to continually subscribe. You just subscribe for a month if you want to export or update your game.”
There are lots of things wrong with saying that.
- How would YoYo Games continue to earn revenue if people just subscribed or canceled whenever they wanted to?
- This makes updates to games cost $10 an update for Indie or $80 an update if you have the Enterprise License.
- It is just an upfront business model I don’t want to use.
- If the monthly costs are not making YoYo Games enough revenue, what’s to keep them going back to yearly only? Costing $100 or $800 a year.
These are the things that keep me from fully wanting to continue with GameMaker Studio 2.
My closing thoughts are that I believe that YoYo Games would benefit by being a free to start game engine like Unreal and Unity by having a threshold of revenue that developers could make before having to pay for a subscription.
And to the people who say that
“YoYo Games is smaller than Unreal and Unity”. There are other game engines that are free or single person developed that have financial success and are popular with their community and they’re not charging them subscriptions.
I also don’t think the current subscription model is being received well by the GameMaker Studio 2 community. There are a couple who are outspoken who don’t like it, but there could very well be more silent users who don’t like it and will soon stop using GameMaker Studio 2 as well.