game-editor.com

I'm almost certainly going to be using GE for commercial game development, in fact I'm setting aside the money now. However before I buy I had some questions about the license. I understand the differences between the free and commercial version and the need for a 3rd party license to do iPhone products.

What I don't understand is the difference between the Express and Professional. The only listed difference I can find is splash screen.

I have to ask, why? A 1400% increase in price doesn't compute. Especially if the only difference is the splashscreen, which I would probably display anyway just cause I like GE. I mean it doesn't like make the player sit through a day long attempt to sell time shares or something does it?

only thing is with ge pro you can tell all your friends that you made your games 100% yourself ..

Hehe I figured it might be that, it's just a large cost for that feature. I'll freely admit I'd rather pay $100 for help rather than spend several times as long making a game or not making it as well.

There's actually more to it than that. The indie versions come with a cap on how much money can be made off the game - it's like 15 grand or so. After than, the pro license is required. The reason for the expense of the pro license, i think, is for major game companies who might use the engine to develop games, pay only the 99 dollar indie license, and then proceed to make 2 million dollars with the game.
This is in part due to the work that has been done to allow GE to export to several platforms with the push of a button - something that your average custom game engine does not do.

Basically, look at it this way: Game Editor costs 1499$, but they are giving a 1400$ discount to independent developers (us).

What is your source for that? It's not mentioned anywhere in the license itself and the buy link just goes to PayPal checkout. I'm not necessarily opposed to that as long as the cap is at least $15,000, but you may have difficulty making it legally stick if it's not in what is presented as the actual license.

It looks like they have removed that phrase from the license since i last read it, about 6 months ago.

well if i made like 15 grand with a GE game (!!) i´ll give them 1500 bucks for sure !!

What?