Today GameMaker announced changes to their pricing and business model. Moving forward, they will provide three tiers of product.
The Free tier is intended for non-commercial use, and should appeal to educators and hobbyist game developers. And great news, the free version is not limited or restricted in terms of features in any way, other than that if you want to build a game for commercial release, you need to buy a Professional or Enterprise license.
The Professional tier is a 1-time $99 charge, and does away with the subscription model for small indie developers who want to make commercial games but have balked at paying a subscription for the tools to create them.
The Enterprise tier is still subscription-based, at $800/year, and enables game console builds for PlayStation, XBox, and Nintendo Switch.
It’s great to see GameMaker giving affordable options to smaller developers. Most of GameMaker’s traditional userbase has been non-professional programmers who wanted an simplified tool that is inexpensive.