Game Maker in Education

GameMaker is used in all levels of education, ranging from primary schools to university. This page will provide an index to useful pages on the wiki about the use of Game Maker in education.

GameMaker was first released in 1999 to worldwide appeal. It has a solid educational following, estimated used in over 5,000 schools. The growth of mobile gaming, social networks and free to play games on the net is huge and is vital that our next generation are equipped for the technological growth.

GameMaker is part of the education model throughout Australia.

GameMaker in the classroom
GameMaker can be used in the classroom and at home. It is accessible by all wether you have a windows PC or Mac and it means you can work on projects in or out of school.

GameMaker comes in 2 versions: Lite and Educational, available for both Windows and Mac.


 * Lite is free of charge and available to download directly from
 * Mac Lite to try out and see for yourself how easy it is to use.


 * GameMaker Educational 8.1 information can be found here
 * GameMaker Educational for Mac information can be found here

For classroom use, only the 8.1 full version (not Lite) can be installed using an MSI. The version we provide for personal use by the students at home or outside of class on their own machines does NOT work with an MSI and must be installed on each PC as it uses a secure DRM that needs to be authenticated to the hardware. Please see more under GM8.1 Education

The difference of GameMaker Educational compared to the retail version is simply that the academic version does not have the auto-updater. It offers a lot more features that Lite does not provide. As a School, you receive a discounted quote with a list of license options to suit your needs. Please contact us on the helpdesk under 'Site Licenses' and we'll happily give you a quote and advice

The Ordering Process
We don't offer "site licenses" however; we DO have academic pricing for Classroom/Lab use. Contact us via this form [webpage] with your details and requirements for a quote.

Please contact us initially through the website form on the Education site page or directly via our helpdesk  We can give you a quote based on your usage and can offer different package tiers. Licenses are concurrent and do not require further renewal, just a simple, single payment.

Payment can be made by Wire Transfer and Cheque, to proceed we arrange a pro forma invoice for your approval. The invoice has all of the info you will need to organise payment. We can accept payment in £, € US $ and Aus $ and will advise you how to do so.

As a school we know that there are often purchasing protocols and you may require an invoice with specific information, paperwork for new vendor approval, and issue purchase orders, etc. We are ready to help with this and will work with you towards your needs.

Once we have confirmed and completed this process, we can then issue a single GameMaker license key for the number of licenses you require, with the academic download link and instructions for deploying over a school network.

Educational Resources
There is information and links for teachers here http://wiki.yoyogames.com/index.php/Information_For_Teachers and official tutorials here http://www.yoyogames.com/make/tutorials and more links in the wiki here http://wiki.yoyogames.com/index.php/Category:Tutorials

A very useful introductory set of resources can also be found in ==Information for Teachers== and of course on the GameMaker Community Forum for Educators [GMC]

What's a YoYo Account?
All licenses require an account to generate a license key and authorise you access to the academic version. We need you to create a user account at http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/register and please give us your username to verify.

How do I install on my network?
To obtain GameMaker Educational please download from -

Standard 8.1 - http://store.yoyogames.com/downloads/gm4win/update_msi.rss HTML5 - http://store.yoyogames.com/downloads/gm4html5/GM4HTML5-Installer-1.0.exe

select Help->Enter License Key

The steps that should be taken are;

1. Read http://wiki.yoyogames.com/index.php/Game Maker in Education

2. Download the MSI that you want from the links on http://store.yoyogames.com/downloads/gm4win/update_msi.rss or http://store.yoyogames.com/downloads/gm4html5/update_msi-html5.rss

3. Get the latest license Stamper (available through our helpdesk)

4. Install the MSI on the target machines - Please note that the command line for installation is msiexec /i GameMaker-8.1..msi TARGETDIR= NOTE : Pay special attention to the directory to install to as it will install to the root directory

5. Install the licenseStamper on the target machine (just ensure it is run with admin permissions).

6. Start GameMaker

I think I might have the non-education version?
The academic doesn't have the auto-updater. Please uninstall and re-install as above.

I get an EInOutError when student accounts try to start GameMaker, but it works when an administrator starts it?
GameMaker needs the student accounts to have some permissions to access shared directories on the local machine these are

1.	the install location

2.	the temporary directory (this can be changed by setting the %TEMP% environment variable

3.	the shared program data directory on Windows 7 this is c:\programdata\GameMaker81 - though this location can vary from system to system.

The only registry location that GameMaker should access are, the student accounts will also need access to them...

1.	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Game Maker

2.	HKEY_LOCAL_USER\Software\Game Maker\Version 8.1

Do you have any resellers based in other countries outside the UK?
No, GameMaker is only available directly from YoYo Games and by contacting us via the website and helpdesk.

Do you accept purchase orders?
We do not operate a purchase order system but happy to accept these but we do not accept these as payment confirmation until payment is made in full. If this causes any serious disruptment to your classes, please contact us and we will arrange but as a general rule we only issue licenses after payment.

Can I pay with a card over your website?
At the moment, we have changed bank accounts and can only accept cheque and wire transfer/BACS until we have set this facility up. This is currently underway and we will soon be able to accept cards on a purpose built webpage for educators. Please bear with us until then!

Do you have GameMaker:Studio available to schools?
GameMaker:Studio release ETA is May 2012. This is a professional tool it is designed to enable games to be exported in various formats including .exe, HTML5, Symbian and for iOS and Android. As it is designed to professionally publish GameMaker onto the public markets you need to have already established approved developer accounts with various platforms ie Apple. We anticipate Studio to be popular and once we have this launched we will continue to work on Studio and can then look at offering this as part of our future educational packages.

I am an afterschool club/summer camp, can I buy individual licenses
Yes, individual coupon codes can be bought the same way and you can issue these to your students. This gives them individual, personal copies of GameMaker registered to their own account. Ideally to be installed on laptops, they can then work on game projects in class and at home.

updated 26.04.2012