YoYo Games has launched a new price tier for its GameMaker Studio 2 game development tool to entice novice developers to use its engine.

The new Creator license tier gives unlimited access to all of GameMaker Studio 2's features for $39 for twelve months. Published games will also display a GameMaker Studio 2 splash page when launched.

Users will receive a 30% discount when upgrading to the standard Developer edition of the engine, to account for having already paid for the service. The Creator edition only allows publishing to either Windows or MacOS – mobile developers will still need to buy the Mobile license, which currently costs $399 for a permanent license.

Easing in

"Our mission at YoYo Games has been simple - build a premier games development engine and toolset for the masses where anyone can unleash their creativity to build awesome games," said James Cox, general manager at YoYo Games.

"The Creator edition delivers this to developers, enabling them to build sophisticated PC and Mac games, and launch them on digital marketplaces such as Steam."

YoYo Games added support to publish games on the Amazon Appstore earlier in November 2017. A low-cost edition of the Developer price tier was also made available for developers who only want to publish on Amazon devices.