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GameMaker makes its 2D engine free for tinkering, $100 for non-console games
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 22 November - 17:27
Up until this year, game engines were not something most gamers had to give much thought to, beyond the one or two seconds their logos might appear while a game was loading.
That changed this fall, when popular pick Unity went from a remarkable anybody-can-make-a-game tool to a developer-enraging , threat-generating , CEO-resignation mess. CD Projekt Red, maker of The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 , made a point of stating that its next games would be built with the Unreal Engine , not its in-house REDengine. After Cities: Skylines 2 launched with notably rough performance , deep decompilation analysis found a bunch of seemingly Unity-related, or at least Unity-adjacent, issues.
That's why this news about another big change in a popular game engine is so striking: it's generally good. GameMaker (formerly Game Maker Studio), a 2D engine that was acquired by browser firm Opera in 2021 , has simplified its licensing structure, declaring it " Free for Non-Commercial Use ."