In a surprise move that would worry any game developer, an acquisition of a game engine loved by hundreds of thousands can be a bit of a big deal.
Playtech who has acquired Yoyo Games and their 750,000 registered developers has been quick to state no big changes will happen to the current pricing model and updates are still in the works.
In an interview with a spokesperson from Playtech, they outline the goals for the future of Game Maker.
We will continue to cater for and build on the loyal community GameMaker and YoYo have developed, as well as investing more resources into improving and making the system faster, more efficient, user-friendly and appeal to a wider professional games developer audience.
The wider plan is Gamemaker 2.0. This is under development and will be completed later this year.
An Interesting mention of Gamemaker 2.0, That was announced back in July may include a new subscription model for developers.
With the current version of Game Maker being 1.4 for a lifetime license, it looks like many developers may need to subscribe to version 2, or continue until support for version 1. xx stops, could this be sooner than many expect?
Are you working on a Game Maker powered game?, What are your thoughts, do you think this will affect you?
Usability, features and cost are the broad basic criteria when choosing any software.
We don't yet know enough about what Playtech's goals are to know how this will impact Gamemaker, if at all.
If they allow us to use MIDI in the games, just like the Game Maker 8 (which is the version I currently use) this will be great for me. If not, at least support for other formats than MP3, like OGG will be wellcome for me.
I downloaded the new Lite version of Game Maker Studio to try it, but couldn't import old projects. Also I had some issues with the sound engine, my sound effects didn't played, this doesn't happens with my Game Maker 8 version.
I hope they fix these issues, Game Maker is a great development tool and is my choice for my works.
OGG Vorbis is supported and I've personally haven't had any issues with importing projects from older version. There's some changes with the GML, but that was a simple fix.
Did you used any MIDI into your old projects? I really got a lot of error messages when importing my GM8 games to GM Studio 1.2.
I bought Game Maker back in the days before Yoyo games was involved. Back then it was Mark Overmars, the original creator.
I was planning to get it again to see how things have progressed. Now I'll wait a bit and see how this transition goes.
doesnt really affect me since im using GM8 but interesting... :/