2009: Game Maker Year in Numbers

• $2.20 – average amount paid by purchasers of the commercial game maker game Immortal Defense in a recent “pay what you like” sale.
• 5 – number of activations allowed by the Softwrap DRM for Game Maker 8
• 6 – Live Game Maker discussion radio programmes hosted by GMLive
• 8.0 – latest version of Game Maker to be released
• 10 years of Game Maker in November
• 14 – Game Maker magazine issue releases
• $25 – new price of Game Maker introduced in January
• 45 – votes out of 552 for Albert Zak’s smiley face logo that was (briefly) the Game Maker 8 logo.  This was dwarfed by the 500 signatories to a petition demanding its removal in the 18 hours following the announcement.
• 90% – the proportion of YoYo Games’ income that comes from people upgrading their copy of Game Maker.  The remaining 10% comes from advertising on the website.
• $10,000 – cash prize awarded to the creators of Climb to the Top of the Castle in a 2BeeGames contest. Five months earlier Save the Planet won $2,500 after coming second in a community poll at the same site.
• 20,000 – downloads of Game Maker 8 in the first 24 hours since its release
• £180,000 – losses recorded by YoYo Games in the year to 31st October 2008.
• 10,000,000 – milestone number of game plays since launch at YoYoGames.com achieved in November

Photo credit: Numbers in transport by James Cridland. (cc)