ENIGMA Forums

General fluff => Off-Topic => Topic started by: Goombert on July 26, 2013, 02:40:04 pm

Title: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: Goombert on July 26, 2013, 02:40:04 pm
Well they had everyone fooled thinking it was going to be the 1.2 update, but apparantly you have to pay 300$ to get it as a module, but if you have already paid more than 499$ then you get it for free, or in other words if you have Master.
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=588680
This is commercial suicide for them....
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: daz on July 26, 2013, 06:54:27 pm
The master collection will be $799, I'm not sure if they're going to be charging $299 for the YYC module alone. I thought they'd only raise the MC price by $200, so this is a little surprising. I think this is far from "commercial suicide", they'll just be like Microsoft and include the modules free if there's enough backlash before release.
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on July 27, 2013, 06:05:13 am
I've heard record-breaking reports of how preposterously buggy GM:S is. And they only want $800 for the whole thing?

Amazingly generous. Hard to compete with that bargain.



I'm actually really surprised.

That I didn't see this coming.

I figured they'd just fail out on the LLVM idea when their performance was magically worse than it was when they were interpreting the code. :P
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: daz on July 27, 2013, 12:16:21 pm
The code is much faster than the interpreter, but I haven't tried any benchmarks vs. enigma.

I had assumed the YYC was going to be provided free with the 1.2 update, and so did many others. It looks like they're giving people shaders at least :P
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on July 27, 2013, 01:13:30 pm
A measly $300 for shaders? I should stop developing ENIGMA and use GM:S.
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: daz on July 27, 2013, 06:16:49 pm
A measly $300 for shaders? I should stop developing ENIGMA and use GM:S.
Reading hard? Shaders are going to be given for free, the YYC is the only new "module" announced so far. As to whether people think it's worth $200-300 for the YYC, I certainly don't.

P.S.
Make mobile exports and sort out the licensing bull shit for completed games, xoxo
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: forthevin on July 29, 2013, 05:33:43 pm
On the thread talking about the GMC forums, it seems that they had an open beta for a long period before they announced the price for the compiler. Another issue they talked about is the lack of upgrade options for those who bought versions of GM:Studio on Steam: The upgrade discount options that customers who bought directly from YoYoGames have, aren't available to those customers who bought over Steam. This is partially explained by the decreased price of the products due to sales on Steam, but some of the users on Steam bought the products for the full price, and they are not offered the upgrade discounts.

Combined with the other issues (the pirate sprite overwriting, selling of unsupported software like GM4Mac without informing potential buyers that it is unsupported, etc.), it seems clear to me that YoYoGames' business model does not rely on building a good reputation amongst its customers. I don't know if that will work out for them in the long run. I get the impression that they are relying on two things: the momentum that Game Maker helped build over the years, as well as using the lack of real alternatives to squeeze money out of their customer base - GM is still a very good product, and people will likely bite the bullet if they don't have other options.

Of course, this business model just helps ENIGMA. I think the turning point will come when two things happens: ENIGMA becomes easy, reliable and stable enough for most users, and we get close to feature parity on important areas with GM. We have all worked hard on the latter point, and I think continuous integration and automated regression testing will be the missing piece of the puzzle to fix the former point.
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: Goombert on July 29, 2013, 07:06:04 pm
Yes, agreed senior forthevin, I have been saying this for some time, it also appears to go like a pyramid scheme with them. Remember way back in the day when the Sandbox got flooded with new users buying game maker? There were games everywhere, by the thousands, and then all of the sudden its userbase started drastically declining, that's when they decided to start with Studio going in a whole new direction, to convince customers to come back. Nobody wants to pay 800$ for buggy software that teaches them bad programming habits, my god most of what YYG added was just open source stuff like Box2D duct tapped into Game Maker, and they can't even do that well.
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on July 30, 2013, 06:07:30 am
Quote
Reading hard? Shaders are going to be given for free
Oh, my mistake. I've never been this wrong in my life. To make it up to you, I'll give you a few acres free beach-front property completely free, if you buy this island off of me.

Quote
it seems clear to me that YoYoGames' business model does not rely on building a good reputation amongst its customers. I don't know if that will work out for them in the long run.
Unfortunately, it will. The GMC has users who have been around for a long time and are on to Yoyo's tricks. Most of them are not overly interested in purchasing the newest Game Maker at present, but are waiting to see how the fight ends between them and Unity, as part of them buys into Duncan's promise that GM will be the best 2D game creation suite on the market.

The other 95% of the GMC comprises 14-year-olds who are just happy to try making games. These are in no short stock. They show up, sing Yoyo praises for a bit, maybe buy the cheapest GM, then realize Yoyo's a pit of retarded snakes and leave. This process takes a matter of months. But it's okay; customer loyalty is not required when the product rakes in $300 quarterly.

Quote
ENIGMA becomes easy, reliable and stable enough for most users
We've been fishtailing around this enormously. ENIGMA has been about that stable for a total of 20 minutes in its past. I don't see it as very likely for this to happen in the near future, but I suppose time will tell.

What's most amazing to me is how all the problems you named are massive, and concern strictly their business model, and are incompatible with ENIGMA's own. I wholly intend to capitalize on their "pirate sprite" faux pas in the future. If not the other two, as well. Granted, ENIGMA 3.5 Mac is not really supported, either; the key difference is that we refunded everyone who was disappointed in double.
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: daz on July 30, 2013, 01:04:37 pm
Code: [Select]
On the thread talking about the GMC forums, it seems that they had an open beta for a long period before they announced the price for the compiler.The open beta is why it felt like a kick in the balls when everyone found out the YYC was not free.

The number of editions and modules is honestly going to be GM's downfall. Many features are missing or buggy on new platforms, but YYG keeps pumping out new platforms before fixing bugs. Like the Tizen module? I have no idea why they're supporting that OS, they must have gotten their dicks sucked to implement that.

Honestly I don't think YYG will last more than 5 years unless they seriously reconsider some of their methods. What I think will happen is they'll release GM:Studio 2 or w/e they want to call the new version which uses VS over Delphi, with a redesigned GUI, and then their sales will dwindle over a year or two and they'll bankrupt.

----

Now full disclosure, I own the master collection already and use GM as my primary development platform. I paid a total of $300 for it, and for me it has made me a good deal more money. I've already mentioned GM is buggy and has lots of cross-platform issues so why use it? It's the easiest damn option there is.

You mention Unity for 2d games, but even with paid plugins like the 2d toolkit, 2d in Unity is god awful. If YYG went under, I would sooner use a 2d designed engine, like cocos2d-x or Corona or Marmalade.

For Enigma to truly compete with GM it needs to support many of the same platforms and read the GMX format (which unfortunately changes often when YYG releases an update). I read something where Robert said you needed/wanted to get the pretty printer and something else working before bothering with other platforms. I've contributed to Enigma and the past and while I would like to help (and would certainly help test), I simply lack the C++ experience and knowledge of Enigma to implement a new platform myself.

The other hindrance for me is that the license is still unmarked. While I believe you won't screw us over in the future, it is almost a necessity for any professional working with Enigma to have a clear license to look to. I mean for the compiled games -- the code is clearly GPL, and so in developing a game unless you write an exception every game appears to be infected with GPL.
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: time-killer-games on August 03, 2013, 03:12:59 pm
Well I'm very thankful this doesn't effect me now that I  bought master collect for just 300. The first hundred is from buying gm:html5 the second is the android module half off, and the third for ugrading king to master, If you bought gm:html5 or bought any modules on a discount, the full price for those discounted purchases are counted as though they were payed for at full price when upgrading to master. While most people have paid 500 and in the future most people will pay 800 I am one of those lucky one who got it probably for the smallest price possible which is 300. (Not to mention I have both the steam and regular version of master thanks to buying it from the YYG's site instead of the steam store).

I am happy with what I got but it still isn't fair, 500-800 dollars is a rip off. 300 isn't but it sure is pushing it.
Title: Re: YoYoGames Compiler for 300$
Post by: wiredbomb0 on August 19, 2013, 03:57:50 am
Ever since YYG took over from Mark Overmars GM has gone down hill fast. The whole point of GM was to be cheap and easy to use and YYG have basically ruined one of those objectives. If I wasn't running windows 8 I would still use GM 6.1 even though I know its not as up to date as GM8.