Why is GameMaker Studio so much more popular than Construct?

Of the top of my head.

1) It is developed by a pretty beefy studio, look up YoYo Games.

2) It's older and was well established before being bought by YoYo Games and even before Construct 2 gain notoriety.

3) Some very popular games have been made with it.

and my personal favorite, a perk of being older...

It has the better name!

Seriously, if you know nothing about making games and want some sort of piece of software that will help you achieve that goal, what would you search for?... probably some sort of game making program some might even type for game maker straight away. It is the best name.

I think the main reason for the difference is most Construct users don't sign up to the reddit page. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from the number of followers on social media (especially since some companies pay to increase their follower counts)

The GMS game portfolio has the strongest console lineup next to Unity, you can't knock that level of mainstream penetration.

It also doesn't hurt that their name is very well optimised for search, and finally, it's not a bad product! I endlessly prefer Construct, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't see the merits of GMS

Games that became hugely popular like Undertale, Hotline Miami and Gunpoint will draw attention to the software. Last time I used Game Maker was in 2005, in fact I bought Construct 2 because I was looking for a better engine for creating games, Game Maker seemed ancient to me. Maybe they've taken steps toward keeping it up to date in recent years but Construct is here now and does everything I need.

I wonder what the actual subscriber numbers for C3 are, but I have the feeling that Ashley/Scirra do not want to disclose this.

Those are all some good points! And I see from the graph by Eren that it's a lot more popular in general. But for the most I was just baffled that people barely mention Construct even though I heard as well that a lot of people use it for making and then selling games to websites like Kongregate.

The name does have a lot to do with it. Construct is a very generic term. One annoyance for me after the rebrand is that it got harder to search construct related information via google, using construct instead of Scirra. That might not have anything to do with adoption though... Maybe "Construct Games" would be more obvious? Probably silly to rebrand again right now though.

I have actually made a few "games" with GM (sadly lost to the sands of time) and while I don´t think it´s terrible, when I tried C2 it just instantly clicked with me in a way GM never managed to. The rest is history.

I don´t think GM is terrible, just not for me.

I agree, i have used GameMaker Studio 1/2 in the past, I think construct does alot of thing better (GUI,Instance Management, Visual Programming, Engine Updates ....). and things are more intuitive, and it's super fast to add feature/prototype your game. and with the hard work Scirra is doing adding new features/ bug fixes as quick as they do... It's just a matter of time before one of the many talented people using construct make a hit game, and give the engine recognition.

I think that the fact that Construct 2/3 does not generate an exe (it does not do it without NWjs) and has to rely on external technologies has some importance.

In addition to the subscription, most escape this payment method.

In addition to the subscription, most escape this payment method.

I mean... the subscription thing... I dunno how impactful it really is. It´s really not that expensive and basically exports to anything from the getgo (except Switch, sadly... But at least there is chowdren)

Gamemaker does export to Switch, for 800$ per year. I mean, we´re talking about 8 years C3 subscription money.

I feel like a lot of people get way to hung up on the whole "subscription" thing, no matter how cheap it actually is. Considering that a 2 hour visit to the cinema costs what... at least 10 bucks without popcorn? Translate this to a C3 license, unless you use C3 less than 10 hours A YEAR, you get easily more "hours per thing" out of C3.

But still, people hear subscription and get triggered. You literally have to not use it at all for an entire year to consider it anything close to beeing "wasted money". Doesn´t matter, it´s a subscription, reeeee.