It looks like GameMaker Studio is finally going subscription-based.
Which makes total sense, and I predicted it about 5 years ago. They denied going to a subscription model at the time, because of course they did. Users at the time weren’t in favor of it, preferring perpetual licensing. But I guess everything changes when you get bought.
Of course, for development tools, everything gets stale if you don’t keep it updated, so a subscription based licensing model probably does make the most sense.
For professionals, anyway. For amateurs and hobbyists, though, it’s a lot of money to pay for a tool if you only use it occasionally. GameMaker’s bread and butter used to be the student/hobbyist/indie developer who could readily afford a one-time price of $40, then $100. Now it’s $100/year, or $9.99/mo. Which is still not that much if you use it a lot, but if you’re just not ready for that type of commitment, there’s really nothing like what GameMaker 8 once was, over a decade ago.
YoYoGames still offers a free edition, intended for student/hobbyist users, but it lacks exports, not even for Desktop OSes, so it’s of extremely limited usefulness for anyone who wants to actually build their projects in order to get feedback from peers and friends.