YoYo Games have announced that the price of GameMaker Studio Master Collection will be increasing in mid-August 2013. In an email sent to mailing list subscribers, customers are advised to “take advantage of the current and very low $499.99 price of GameMaker Studio Master Collection.” As of version 1.2, the price of GameMaker Studio Master Collection will increase by 60% to $799.99.
Customers who purchase GameMaker Studio Master Collection are currently provided with newly released modules for free, though in a recent post Game Maker Blog discussed the ambiguity of YoYo Game’s “free modules” offer after a GameMaker forum administrator suggested that the offer was only guaranteed until version 1.2. YoYo Games have now promised that customers who purchase GameMaker Studio Master Collection will receive “all current and future export modules as they are made available.”
The email also notes that a new “YoYo Compiler” will be sold separately for $299.99, which will apparently “increase performance 100 fold.” It is not clear if customers who purchase GameMaker Studio Master Collection prior to the 1.2 release will receive the YoYo Compiler for free, though sources suggest they will.
If paying this much for GameMaker sounds ridiculous to you, remember that GameMaker 8.1 for Windows is available for $39.99.
Thanks so much for this heads up. I have applied for the upgrade and really appreciate not having missed this opportunity.
Also, I believe that YYG is charging very prices for their products. I have been an iOS dev since the AppStore opened, and I have spent over $4K on Unity alone. So YYG’s prices are more than fair. (I’ve also spent lots of money on trying other SDKs (like Corona) which ended up a total waste of money in the end.)
And yet, they still have the ugly as shit UI. I am so happy I’m not wasting money into this shit software.
There’s a new UI on the way. Why are you here if you hate it? Ta-ra!
Where’s the new “product”? Your article’s title mentions it, but doesn’t talk about anything else but the new compiler.
By the way, YoYoGames has always promised modules for 1.x for GameMaker Studio although they only ever announced two paid modules since offering the Master Collection: Linux and Windows Phone 8.
The compiler is a new product, to be sold separately.
Still running Game Maker 8.0 🙂 cheap, mostly big free, and runs on both my win 7 64-bit system and windows 8 laptop.
Just don’t have money for studio 🙁
Huh. Surprised to see the compiler is going to be sold separately, especially for so much. I think that “100 fold” figure is a bit pie in the sky, especially since 100 fold is over 1267 billion, billion, billion. 😛
I don’t get all the complaints here. Why would you expect that a company releases major product enhancements (like the YYC) or additional export modules for free?
There is absolutely no reason to do so.
If you bought any version like GM:S for Windows or the Professional edition you bought the product “as is”. You have no right at all to demand future improvements for free.
Look around, all other companies do it like this – for years! Do you expect Microsoft to ship Windows 8 to you for free just because you bought a PC with Windows XP on it 10 years ago? Or does Adobe release newer versions for free? Photoshop Elements for example doesn’t even offer ANY upgrade mechanism. You have to buy the new release again for the full price…
I think YoYo Games treats customers pretty well if you think about it. Price increases are announced several weeks ahead, most of the time they even start some bargain campaign to give you a chance to buy in. And they do have fair upgrade conditions.
All those massive product enhancements (GM:S alone, shaders, YYC, export modules, documentation, tutorials, etc) don’t come for free – there are a lot of employees at YoYo in the mean time who want to get a salary every month. How do you expect YoYo to pay them if you demand everything for free?
You want a professional tool and I think GM:S is on a very good way to get there. But that’s simply not possible for a one time fee from your side.
Just my 2 cents,
Thomas
Agreed. This is a commercial company with a commercial product and they deserve to try and make a profit from their work.
Is the price too high? Doubt it, we in Australia pay waaaay higher prices for software than the US does.
And what does 3Dmax cost now? $4,000 in Australia.
Wow… just wow. YoyoGames really hate their customers don’t they.
“Buy this….. Now pay $300 to make it faster.”
Exactly!
Why not abandon the ‘old’ compiler and just change it for the new one?
YYG says: nope! You need to pay 300 dollars to make better and faster games, otherwise you’re stuck with the old one!
They’re a business. You shouldn’t expect them to give everything away. Would you?
Does this mean that if you stay with Pro, you’re not going to get the new and better compiler, unless you pay for it? So I bought Pro and have to pay extra for performance increase, even for the target platforms I already own? I don’t really get this, having to buy the compiler…
And will the export modules increase in price too?
Yes, it looks like you will have to buy it separately.
And it’s not currently known if module prices will increase too.
I guess the price increase makes sense when you consider how much they have added to the Master Collection since it was released, but it’s still unfortunate to me that they’re continuing to put it further and further out of reach of newbie developers. I’m glad I decided to upgrade to the Master Collection when they had their last sale of it; if they had announced that the new compiler would cost so much as an additional module for Professional licensees, I’d be pretty upset, and feel like I should be entitled to the compiler since it targets a platform that I already can build for, and is simply a performance boost on that platform.
I think all of the pure newbie stuff is still there, but YoYo aren’t showing it off. They’re selling Studio as a different product to GM8, where really it’s GM9 with cross platform features if you want them.
At least we can assume this compiler is going to be seriously impressive. For that price, it has to be.
I know right! Can’t wait to try it out with my OUYA 😀 It doesn’t look like it can cope with surfaces very well at this point in time so YYC should speed it up!
I’ve already tried it in beta, and for the limited tests that I put it through, it seemed to deliver only a 2x performance boost, not 100x. 2x = 100% though, so I’m wondering what the final YYC will really deliver. 100x would be *AMAZING* — 2x is a bit “meh”.
For $300, 2x is a lot “meh”.
Don’t just consider the speed. YYC turns your game from interpreted to compiled. That comes with a lot good things. In my opinion this will increase the GM capabilities of handling very huge games as well.
300$ for YYC seems fair to me, considering that this is just a beta version and all the other updates of this version will be free.
As far as i know, game maker does compile your game, hence the need for the relevant SDK’s installed.
Nope, the current GameMaker doesn’t compile your game. It just interprets the GML code from a previously compiled runner.
The YYC does a full compilation of your game.
I thought i remember the whole deal with GM:S was that it moved away from that?
The deal with GM:Studio was that the runner was re-written in C++
Read this on YoYo’s web site which could make the offer more interesting…
*Minimum upgrade price of $0. If you have previously purchased GameMaker: Studio Professional and export modules to a total value equal to or greater than the Master Collection price of $499.99, you will receive an upgrade to Master Collection for no additional cost.
Good catch! Also good to hear.
That’s great for Professional users, I’m really glad that YYG decided to do that for us. It really was the most sensible thing, and encourages devs to progress from Standard to Pro to Master Collection, rather than punishing people who didn’t dive into the deep end right away.
Like Alex said, pro is also available for 50. When you want to make games for say, mobile, you’ll pay fees to Microsoft and Apple which, if you do well, are way higher. I think it’s fair.
“If paying this much for GameMaker sounds ridiculous to you, remember that GameMaker 8.1 for Windows is available for $39.99.”
I think studio for windows is only 49.99, which is pretty good for what it is. It’s when you want to publish on mobile devices that it starts to get expensive.
GM 8.0 ftw! Stable, doesn’t bug your game with every update (I know there are none, but fixing random bugs every week is annoying) and doesn’t have the 8.1 problems.
Sadly, 8.0 doesn’t work on Windows 7 64-bit. 8.1 is fine, though.
8.0 works fine on Win7 64-bit — I know because that’s the only environment I use it on.
Which one is glitchier, anyway, GM8 or GM8.1?
Didn’t work at all for me. Which flavour of Win7 you using?
I used it on Win7 Home Premium 64-Bit with average stats all around. It’s running fine on my newer Win7 Ultimate 64-bit as well, not that I use it anymore. (YYG is bent on ensuring GM has no real future)
What exactly are “the 8.1 problems”?