I add my knowledge too, because the list is not full.

1.
I licensed 500 copies of GM6.1 from Mark as a branded version, and so far I sold about 300 copies in Hungary. It costed about $8000 for me (license, production, site hosting etc.) and I earned about $3000, which means a massive $5000 loss.
Altogether, I don’t regard it as a loss, because I built a community arount GM and run the site for about 4 years (2005-2009). $1000 loss the part of the $5000 was because we spent this amount for the prizes of the contests we run.

Now, the http://www.gamemaker.hu was renamed and the aim of the site had changed.(last year at november, becase GM8 made our effort worthless, and the GM6.1 lost any ability to be sold). When YoYo changed the upgrade policy (no free upgrades) then any older version lost their value. I have to add that YoYo was more than fair with us, they gave me 35 coupons to add to the product which allowed my customers to freely upgrade from 6.1->7.

So for me the answer is : No (I didn’t make any money, or more precisely: any profit)

2.
Silentworks, also a hungarian guy, created the first version of SilentWalk (www.silentworks.hu) in Game Maker. Now, since the first version is not on sale, the second isn’t done in Game Maker, I might share this information (nobody will decompile and crack the first version, I guess). He also made some small amount of money of Silent Walk 1 (according to his words: he was able to buy a good coat, which means about $500-600). I don’t know anything about his spendings though. But I guess: altogether, the Silent Walk 1, which was made in Game Maker, wasn’t profitable.
Answer: probably No

3.
I also created some commercial games in Game Maker, which are still on sale in the US. I am tied by my contract, and I cannot name them (nor can I link to them), this was added to the contract when the decompiler came out. I made about $1500 from them as an upfront, and on-completion payment (I do not get any royalty of them). I do not know any sales statistics on them.
Answer: Yes, for me. I worked altogether about 2 months on them, so I made $750 / month. Which is not that much, but still I regard it as an income and profit (beside my daily job, so I might regard it as a hobby-income)

I hope this help and prove, that GM might bring in money, if you use and sell it properly. My GM6.1 project was a loss, but that’s because I am a coder, and I wasn’t able to keep up with sales knowledge. I also do work on a site, where I will sell my games in GM and other creator softwares, and the games of others (from the community we built).

Thanks!
Peter

I’ve heard rumours that some developers use Game Maker as a fast way to prototype a game, then they outsource the development work for a different more “serious” platform to a third party. I guess that means they’re indirectly making — or at least saving — money with Game Maker.

By the way, if any experienced Game Maker wants to try their hand at writing a book — the only option to get an unqualified “yes” above — then please contact me by clicking my name above. I work for Packt Publishing, a tech book publisher that’s just getting into games development books.