GameMaker is now free for noncommercial use

[VinnyVideo]

https://twitter.com/GameMakerEngine/stat...4196128776

Yes, you read that right.

[kremling]

Yeah, this was great to see. GameMaker works better as a one-time buy product anyways.

[Q-Nova]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?

Seriously, my jaw fell when I first heard the news! I thought it sounded like a sick joke, but nope, it's actually real! It looks like all of the features are free -- you only to have to pay if you want to make money off of your games or port them to consoles. I believe that up until now, starting with Game Maker 5, you had to pay a fee to utilize some features. It's amazing that they allow for so much freedom now!

I was disappointed when my license for GameMaker 8.1 stopped working, and thus that version is stuck on the lite version (there was a few times when it went back to the standard version but it reverted back to lite), although I guess a lot of the features exclusive to upgrades are rather superfluous. I still have GameMaker Studio 1 with the license (which still works thankfully, probably because it doesn't require an Internet connection), but some of the GameMaker How-Tos on MFGG don't work on Studio, and there's some things I like better about older versions of GameMaker (such as nostalgia, MIDI support, compatibility with older versions of Windows, and possibly speed).

Seeing this news announcement almost makes me want to check out the new (and improved?) GameMaker, which is something I've never felt in regards to Studio 2! However though, I think I'm quite good with the older versions. Nevertheless, I'm excited to see what this will mean to hobbyist game developers (including Mario fangame makers)! What if we see a renaissance of the era when Flash and GameMaker were both at the peak of popularity? (I don't know how user-friendly the new GameMaker is, though...)

And to think, not too long ago, we weren't sure if GameMaker would still have any appeal to those who make games just for fun.

Quillax Ship - Where you can download all of my cool, keen mods and super-marvelous fangames!

[The ☆ ChahArt]

Nice, gotta sign up as soon as Possible for future projects!