Buying Educational Licences
There are two types of licence that can be bought for students, and each can be bought for a one month, 12 month or 24 month time period:
- Educator - This licence grants the user the Desktop compile targets, which gives full access to the product and permits the user to compile projects for Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu (Linux).
- Educator Plus - This includes all functionality of the Desktop and Web licences e.g. will run GameMaker Studio 2 on Windows and macOS machines and allows games to be exported to Windows, macOS, Ubuntu and HTML5
- Achiever - This licence grants the user the Desktop, Mobile, Web, UWP, and now Sony PS4 compile targets, which gives full access to the product and permits the user to compile projects for Windows, macOS, Ubuntu (Linux), Android, Amazon Fire, iOS/tvOS, HTML5, Windows UWP and Sony PS4. To gain Sony PS4 access you will need to first purchase your Achiever licences and then follow the steps outlined in our Getting Access To The PS4 Export guide.
All licences are timed licences and after the selected time period is over, you will need to re-purchase to continue using the product. You can find the different licence pricing from the YoYo Games Education page.
How many licences will I need to buy?
Please note that you only need to purchase the amount of licences for the number of concurrent users of the software. For example, if you have a class of 30 students then you will need to purchase 30 licences, however if you have two separate classes of 15 students, with those classes happening at separate times, you will only need to purchase 15 licences. You'll see, in our Creating and Managing Seats article that you create seats (usernames and password) for each machine that will be accessing the software. These seats can be shared as long as they are not being used at the same time. If you do decide to share these seats we would recommend taking advantage of the auto-logout preference to avoid these seats from exceeding their maximum amount of logins. Please refer to our Automatically Log Users Out Each Time GMS2 Is Closed article for information on how to set this up.
With this information in mind, you're now ready to choose your currency and add your licences to your basket.
Choosing currency and Adding Licences to your basket
You can add licences to your cart via our Education page or the "Available to Buy" section of your Products page.
You can now choose from a list of currency options when purchasing your licences.
You can either choose your currency on the Education page like so:
Or, you can choose your currency on the Products page, like so:
Or lastly, you can also choose to set your preferred currency on your Profile page as well.
When you have your preferred currency chosen, you can then add the licences you are needing to a basket.
Your basket
Once you have selected the appropriate licence for your needs, you will also need to specify the number of "seats" that will be using it, with a minimum purchase of 5 seats per licence (but it can be more):
Before continuing, please make sure the purchase details - shown on the right of the image above - are correct, and make any changes required from your Settings > Profile section of the YoYo Account dashboard. If everything is correct then you can click one of the payment option buttons (credit card, bank transfer or PayPal), or you can click the Continue Shopping button to add further licences.
When opting to pay by bank transfer you will also be able to create your own pro-forma invoice. This process is covered in our How to create an invoice and purchase licenses guide. Please note, your licences will not be generated until we have received payment from you.
Please note that payment directly to YoYo Games can only be made by bank transfer, PayPal or credit/debit card; we do not accept purchase orders or cheque.
After completing your purchase
Once the purchase has been confirmed you will be returned to the YoYo Account page and shown a receipt of the purchase, and an email will be sent to the account holder address with a full receipt too.
If you return to your Products page for the account, you should see that the new GameMaker Studio 2 licence(s) will be shown:
With your licences now purchased, it's time to create seats to attach these licences to. Please refer to our Creating and Managing Seats article for instructions on how to do this.
Buying Additional Licences
If after having already purchased licences you wish to purchase more, please simply follow the steps above.
If you wish to purchase fewer than 5 additional licences please add the minimum 5 licences to a cart and then contact our helpdesk, who will be able to manually edit the quantity for you (note this option is only available if you have already purchased 5 or more of the licence type you are wanting to buy additional licences of).
If you wish to upgrade from Educator licences to Achiever licences please Contact Our Helpdesk.
Next Steps: