Install Requirements

Windows IDE

Important

Windows devices cannot build games for any Apple platforms (you will need a separate Mac for that) or Ubuntu (you will need a separate Ubuntu machine for that)

• Windows 8 or newer is required
• Windows Server variants are not officially supported, but may work if you configure them correctly
• GameMaker itself and exported games can be run on x64 and ARM machines
• GameMaker requires NTFS-formatted drives for all save/load locations

Note that whilst we don't offer any support for these old Windows versions, if you are using an old PC you can run old versions of GameMaker and play your games on your own PC just fine - but you may not be able to send your games to anyone else:

• Windows 7 and Vista support ended with 2024.11; newer versions of GameMaker itself may launch and allow you to edit projects, etc., but your games will always fail on startup

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macOS IDE

Important

Mac devices cannot build games for Windows platforms or any consoles (you will need a separate PC for that) or Ubuntu (you will need a separate Ubuntu machine for that)

Tip

Please don't use macOS/iOS/tvOS/Xcode "developer and "beta" builds - Apple's beta builds are often subject to large changes and an issue in one version may not be present in the next update. Be aware we will only fix issues present in their general release builds

• macOS Ventura or newer is required by GameMaker; however, for submitting your games to Apple's App Store you will need to be using Sonoma 14.5 or newer, so we obviously recommend that you use a recent release of macOS
• Recommend you leave case-sensitivity off when setting up your macOS machine (which is the default when installing macOS) - GameMaker itself is fine with this setting being on, but we cannot guarantee what external tools/extensions, etc., will require, so it's safest to stay with it off
• Xcode is required to be installed separately before you can build any "Apple platform" packages, and Xcode has its own minimum OS version Apple will allow you to install it on - see the macOS Setup Guide for specifics
• An Apple Developer account is required before you can use Xcode - and this developer account will need to have a paid subscription if you want to release your game or run your game on anyone else's devices, as only dev-testing on your own machine is free these days

Note that whilst we don't offer any support for these old macOS versions, if you are using an old Mac you can run old versions of GameMaker and play your games on your own Mac just fine - but you won't be able to send your games to anyone else (as mentioned above):

• Monterey support ended with 2024.8; therefore, 2024.11 onwards will say it cannot start on your Mac
• Catalina and Mojave support ended with 2023.4; therefore, 2023.6 onwards will error on start
• High Sierra support ended with 2023.1.1; therefore, 2023.2.0 onwards will error on start

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Ubuntu IDE

Caution

The Ubuntu Beta IDE is only released on the Beta channel and is not classed as suitable for a production environment at this time.

Important

Ubuntu devices cannot build games for Windows platforms or any consoles (you will need a separate PC for that) or any Apple platforms (you will need a separate Mac for that)

• Ubuntu 24 LTS is the only officially-supported distro
• GameMaker may work fine on other distros if you can install the .deb and the other required packages yourself, but we might not accept bug reports found when using these other distros or any customised Ubuntu kernels, etc., as we are only interested in "regular" Ubuntu feedback