I don’t know what to think about it. I came across gdevlop after doing a lot of research. Open source, community, it all sounded great. I watched lots of YouTube videos and was really looking forward to it.
After 15 minutes of looking around and logging into gdevelop, I feel really sick.
You can’t save! Seriously?
Before I could even create a game, I was told that my two cloud saves required me to pay money.
Right now, so I can save? I didn’t even save a project because it’s not possible, only “in the cloud” or “don’t save for now.”
With every minute I spend here, I think it’s just a money-making machine.
At every turn, you immediately feel: you can’t get any further, you can’t take three steps without being asked to pay. For children, it’s a pure subscription trap. I thought I could recommend gdevlop in a school environment, but nothing works unless you pay.
I’m disappointed and angry.
Hey! First of all welcome to GDevelop!
Thankfully, GDevelop is not a subscription trap! As a person who has been using GDevelop for over a month now, without paying a single cent, I think it is probably the best game engine. I’m going to answer your questions 1 at a time:
GDevelop allows you 3 cloud saves without paying. This is actually extremely nice of them since they have to pay to host these cloud servers. If you only see “Save to Cloud” or “Don’t save for now”, you most likely are either on mobile or the GDevelop website. Unfortunately, mobile (as far as I’m aware) and the web editor can only save to cloud. On the other hand, if you download the GDevelop app for Mac or PC, you get UNLIMITED saves to your device, plus 3 cloud saves.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Everything on GDevelop that requires you to pay is usually a premium version of something you can do for free. Could you name some of the features that you found were paid?
Sorry that you had a bit of a rough start to GDevelop, but the forums community and I will always be available to answer any questions you may have.
Wells said snowy, but im not sure what u mean “you cant get any further” you only pay for some things, like snowy said, im sorry u had a rough start @ GDevelop.
Hi - I’ve been using it for two years and created/published 5 games without paying for a subscription. I do sometimes donate(about £10 per game is my budget!) to the gd.games ‘Money-making-machine’ but i do see this as giving back a little to the Gdevelop engine. Whether the developers get any of the money from gd.games - I don’t know!
At first thank you all for your warm explanations. It is possible , that I had a bad start , but when I was looking for an engine which I can use for educational purpose, I look through the eyes of young people without much frustration tolerance. And in this view, every few steps there you see: you need credits.
For me as an adult it is no problem to “give something back” and to give money for the costs of hosting etc.
But in a view of child with no experience I feel not “welcome” and don’t feel gdevelop is a playground for creativity because of the permanent need to pay credits from beginning.
The fact that there are only rudimentary free tutorials and then “credits please” again is oft-putting to me. (As I said from the perspective of a child.)
But even for me as adult , it would be better to be asked to make a “hosting donation” at the beginning , but not to have to pay with credits to learn an open source program. Even Unity offers free tutorials and assets and they definitely want to make money.
Regarding your questions: I use the Android version of GDevelop, and right at the start it told me that I had used up two slots for cloud storage and should please pay, or choose the “don’t save” option, even though I hadn’t saved anything. This gave me the impression that “before I can even save a new project, I have to pay, because it’s not worth trying something that you’ll lose because you couldn’t save it.” And that feels like a “paywall right before you start” and not like open source.
I want to try giving gdevelop a chance, because the things I’ve seen and heard about it so far all sound good. But to be honest , I’ve already looked into Unity because of the bad start.
Yeah, the android version of GDevelop is pretty bad, and is mainly meant to be a companion the the desktop version. The main difference between the two is that the desktop version allows you to save the desktop instead of solely relying on cloud projects.
As for the in engine tutorials, don’t even bother with them, you will get a lot more out of YouTube tutorials, official or unofficial,or even just the forum here.
As for credits, while they are annoying, you can for the most part, ignore them and any features that use them. The main thing they’re used for is to promote your game on GDevelops website.
Final thing I want to mention is the limit to features that use the GDevelop server, like auto builds and leaderboards. I would assume that would be a little annoying to new members, especially since you got more leader boards and auto builds in the past (you technically still do, but only for older accounts),althoughI haven’t seen any new complain about the lesser offering.
Although, to cut GDevelop some slack, you do always have the option to build your games manually through electron/cordova, and you can always make a leader board or multi-player lobby using external services.
Hello, I would recommend you for primary use: the desktop version of GDevelop. With this version you shouldn’t have any trouble to save your project locally for example.
I guess that even the GDevelop’s tutorial videos are more focused for the desktop version.