Permissions Guide
Your protection software and/or operating system settings blocking your files from being written/read while you're using GameMaker is an extremely common source of "bug" reports. These include not able to sign-in, not able to download GMS2 runtimes or packages in Package Manager, not being able to save projects, and things you may not initially think were due to your OS permissions such as sounds/sprites not appearing in-game when you build your projects.
When installing or updating GameMaker it is vital that you confirm OS folder permissions and any antivirus clients, firewalls, proxy servers, etc., are correctly set up for your chosen GameMaker version.
Yes, this is a long article, but we recommend new users follow it carefully from top-to-bottom before starting with GameMaker, as the information in this guide is so often overlooked and then a problem occurs, when your answer was here all along
Can I get 1-1 Advice On Setting Up My Machine? Click Here
No, we do not offer this service. We do not have access to your machine and therefore we are unable to determine issues with protection software beyond what is written in this guide. We do cover the vast majority of scenarios here and already give information on any troubleshooting tips we have found to be relevant.
For Educational environments, this includes situations such as "why does one machine or student accout in a classroom work when the others do?", or "why can a teacher account can do something and a student cannot?" - for anything like this you need to ask the person who usually configures your user accounts.
Important
Before you begin following this guide, first confirm your system clock, date and timezone are correct and synced, as all file saving/loading relies on accurate timestamps and your OS clock being wrong can mean that GameMaker thinks files either are or are not modified when you were expecting the opposite to be true
If it's not absolutely required on your system, then we don't recommend this, but installation may need to be performed by an administrator account, as:
- On Windows, the installer detects if additional third-party software packages are required to be installed in Windows in order to have a working GameMaker install
- On macOS and Ubuntu, the installers run a post-install shell script to ensure the folders and tools GameMaker just installed are allowed to be used thereafter
You can choose your install location during the installer, however be aware GameMaker does not support remote/portable drive installations or any form of thin-client systems. Be aware also that this only affects the location of GameMaker itself - it does not affect the default locations of GameMaker's various tools/settings folders or your project save areas (which are all documented further down on this page).
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There is no distributed/automated installation facility and so initial installation, licensing and runtime installation will have to be carried out at each machine.
You can, however, download your runtimes one time and then pass these around locally on your network in order to save repeated downloads - see this Helpdesk FAQ on how to download your runtimes as a .zip.
Tip
Do not run GameMaker in admin/elevated mode after the installation is complete, as this can cause OS permission problems when importing/saving files from Windows Explorer
All users on the machine will need full read+write access to all of the paths given in the below sections.
A number of locations for the temp/build folders and the Package Manager download folder can all be changed by you after GameMaker has been installed and you have signed-in. You will find these settings in Preferences > Paths and Preferences > Package Manager.
GameMaker's own settings, the tools it uses to build your projects, and information on your testing devices:
| OS | Folder Path |
|---|---|
| Windows | C:\ProgramData\GameMakerStudio2 |
| macOS | /Users/Shared/GameMakerStudio2/ (Macintosh HD > Users > Shared > GameMakerStudio2) |
| Ubuntu | /var/opt/GameMakerStudio2 OR some newer Ubuntu versions use ~/.local/share/GameMakerStudio2 |
Each GameMaker user's own Preferences and settings, plus information on the projects they have worked on:
| OS | Folder Path |
|---|---|
| Windows | %AppData%\GameMakerStudio2 (AKA C:\Users\[Windows username]\AppData\Roaming\GameMakerStudio2) |
| macOS | ~/.config/GameMakerStudio2/[your GameMaker username]/ (Note that .config is hidden by default, so you need to open Finder and then press Shift + Cmd + . to toggle showing hidden files and folders.) OR newer macOS versions use /Users/[your Mac username]/Library/Application Support/GameMakerStudio2/[your GameMaker username]/ instead |
| Ubuntu | /opt/GameMakerStudio2 (note that this path is very similar to GameMaker's program data path mentioned above, so be careful that you're looking at the correct one) OR some newer Ubuntu versions use /home/.config/GameMakerStudio2 |
Each user's own project save location defaults to:
| OS | Folder Path |
|---|---|
| Windows | C:\Users\[OS username]\GameMakerProjects |
| macOS | /Users/[OS username]/GameMakerStudio2 |
| Ubuntu | /home/[OS username]/Documents/GameMakerStudio2 |
GameMaker's build location defaults to:
| OS | Temp Path | Build Cache Path |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | %LocalAppData%\GameMakerStudio2 | %AppData%\GameMakerStudio2\Cache |
| macOS | Specific to the OS user and uses randomly-generated values, so we can't document yours here (open Preferences in GameMaker and get the location from there) |
/Users/[OS username]/.config/GameMakerStudio2/Cache |
| Ubuntu | /tmp/GameMakerStudio2 | /home/[OS username]/.config/GameMakerStudio2/Cache |
Note that after following this guide you might need to clean your project cache via the button inside GameMaker or by manually removing the cache files in the folders mentioned above before you try building it again, so you may wish to clear any stale files out just now.
Package Manager's download and configuration folder defaults to:
| OS | Folder Path |
|---|---|
| Windows | C:\Users[OS username]\gmpm |
| macOS | /users/[USERNAME]/gmpm |
| Ubuntu | /home/[USERNAME]/gmpm |
It's likely you will need to add all of the locations mentioned in the last section to your antivirus client's exclusions list also, as your protection software locking your project/build/settings files will often increase build times and will occasionally cause build failures.
Although the previous section of this guide talked about ensuring access to GameMaker's folders, if you find your projects still fail to build and run correctly you may need to configure your antivirus/firewall for these applications individually.
Tip
Always make exclusions as high up along the filepath as you can, and ideally for entire folders, as that saves you having to micro-manage individual files and you may then be able to skip a lot of this section
GameMaker relies on three essential executables in your GMS2 runtimes installation folder in order to compile your projects and deploy/run your game for any GMS2 target. These are GMAssetCompiler, Igor, and Runner.
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If you are already having issues where your builds stop very early in the build process, with maybe only a few lines written to the Output Window before everything stops, then ensure your antivirus client has not already removed any of these tools off your disk.
For more info on how to do this, please see this Helpdesk guide: Fixing Quarantine Issues In Antivirus Products.
| OS | Folder Path | Application Names |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | C:\ProgramData\GameMakerStudio2\Cache\runtimes\[your runtime version number]\ | bin\assetcompiler\windows\x64\GMAssetCompiler.exe bin\assetcompiler\windows\x64\GMAssetCompiler.dll bin\igor\windows\x64\Igor.exe bin\igor\windows\x64\Igor.dll windows\x64\Runner.exe |
| Mac IDE | /Users/Shared/GameMakerStudio2/Cache/runtimes/[your runtime version number]/ | mac/Mac-YoYoRunner-Release.dmg mac/Application-Oven-1.0.dmg M-series Macs: bin/assetcompiler/osx/arm64/GMAssetCompiler.exe bin/assetcompiler/osx/arm64/GMAssetCompiler.dll bin/igor/osx/arm64/Igor.exe bin/igor/osx/arm64/Igor.dll Intel Macs: bin/assetcompiler/osx/x64/GMAssetCompiler.exe bin/assetcompiler/osx/x64/GMAssetCompiler.dll bin/igor/osx/x64/Igor.exe bin/igor/osx/x64/Igor.dll |
| Ubuntu | /var/opt/GameMakerStudio2/Cache/runtimes/[your runtime version number]/ | bin/assetcompiler/linux/x64/GMAssetCompiler.exe bin/assetcompiler/linux/x64/GMAssetCompiler.dll bin/igor/linux/x64/Igor.exe bin/igor/linux/x64/Igor.dll linux/runner.zip (just in case your AV provider really needs this one) |
Any plugins/prefabs downloaded via Package Manager (including ProjectTool and Windows IDE Updater), plus all the tools used for the GMRT runtime.
It would be impossible for us to list every package you might have installed, but you should review the subfolders inside your gmpm folder and determine any that you need to whitelist in your protection software whenever you run into a problem.
As a minimum, we'd recommend always allowing all executables inside these two folders:
| Plugin Name | Folder Path |
|---|---|
| IDE Updater | \gmpm\GMTools\IDE-Updater-Windows |
| ProjectTool | \gmpm\GMTools\project-tool-win-x64 |
Mac IDE and Ubuntu IDE users, the packages obviously have their own folder suffixes and this name depends on the architecture of your machine, but you'll still find them in the GMTools folder, so they're easy to determine.
And if you're building using GMRT, then be aware you will likely need to allow multiple executables inside \gmpm\GMRT\Release\bin
Installation is not complete until you have downloaded your GMS2 runtime files, and in order to do this you will also have to successfully log in to our accounts server to complete a licensing request. If you need to configure a firewall in order to achieve this, please read this section carefully.
If you can, we would recommend you simply allow access to
- *.gamemaker.io
- *.yoyogames.com
- *.opera-api.com
- api.mixpanel.com
Ports 80 and 443 are required to run GameMaker, so you must manually add a firewall rule to allow GameMaker to access these ports (and any others that you require when they are mentioned in other sections further down this page), as GameMaker will not dynamically create any rules for you.
GameMaker checks a few external websites in order to know when your machine has internet access but you have not allowed the GameMaker sites mentioned above, and it will avoid unnecessary authentication attempts during these times. You should allow whichever one of these is relevant to your global location to prevent any issues with your licence becoming stale:
| Region | Server | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Everywhere except China and Russia | https://www.google.com | Google then performs its own redirection to your "local" Google domain (e.g., here in the UK we are redirected from .com to .co.uk) and you will need to allow this one as well |
| China | https://www.baidu.com | |
| Russia | https://www.yandex.ru |
Depending on your chosen IDE(s) installed, you will also need to allow the relevant IDE update feed and the accompanying GMS2 runtime update feed:
| Install Type | OS | IDE Feed | Runtime Feed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | Windows | https://gms.yoyogames.com/update-win.rss | https://gms.yoyogames.com/Zeus-Runtime.rss |
| macOS | https://gms.yoyogames.com/update-mac.rss | (same as Windows above) | |
| LTS | Windows | https://gms.yoyogames.com/update-win-LTS.rss | https://gms.yoyogames.com/Zeus-Runtime-LTS.rss |
| macOS | https://gms.yoyogames.com/update-mac-LTS.rss | (same as Windows above) | |
| Beta | Windows | https://gms.yoyogames.com/update-win-NuBeta.rss | https://gms.yoyogames.com/Zeus-Runtime-NuBeta.rss |
| macOS | https://gms.yoyogames.com/update-mac-NuBeta.rss | (same as Windows above) | |
| Ubuntu | https://gms.yoyogames.com/update-linux-NuBeta.rss | (same as Windows above) |
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If you do have to specify all addresses individually, then the full list is below:
- https://accounts.yoyogames.com
- https://accounts.yoyogames.com/api/health-check
- https://marketplace.yoyogames.com/api/health-check
- oauth2.opera-api.com/*
- api.mixpanel.com/*
- https://www.yoyogames.com
- https://releases.gamemaker.io
- https://gamemaker.io/accounts
- https://marketplace.yoyogames.com if you want to download the demo/tutorial projects offered on the Start Page within GameMaker
Steam User? Click Here
GameMaker will honour the Steam client's own setting for whether you're online/offline. Whilst this is usually fine nowadays, offline mode can cause issues with licensing and with downloading files - especially if using older versions of GameMaker and/or not the current version of Steam itself.
If you have any issues please set your Steam client to be online, as in general our advice remains if Steam is set to offline mode then GameMaker will also be in offline mode.
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Please see our Helpdesk FAQ for using proxy servers with GameMaker, as your proxy settings may need to be configured before you will be able to authenticate successfully.
You always need to allow the English manual, which can be found at https://manual.gamemaker.io/monthly/en/#t=Content.htm
There are a number of other languages which we translate the manual into - you can find these by opening the English manual and then toggling at the top of the page. If you want to use one of these as your preferred manual inside GameMaker, then of course you should add its URL to your exceptions as well as the English URL.
Tip
Also see the Micro Web Server section further down this guide for more details about the manual.
If you have to open specific ports for GameMaker to reach your network, then be aware that for the debugger to connect to devices when you're testing your games you will probably need to allow this also. Remember that you may need to apply the same firewall rule to the game application if it is installed on this machine also, otherwise you won't have two-way traffic.
You'll know if this is your issue, because your Output Window will have something like the following text and the debugger won't connect:
Start debug server
Creating Debugger server port:6509
Error: Can't listen to socket
cannot listen on selected port
...
Creating Debugger server port:6513
Error: Can't listen to socket
cannot listen on selected port
[DbgServer]Failed
The default is set in Preferences > General Settings > Debugging to be 6509 (TCP). If you change this value, be aware it will be the first port the IDE attempts to use, but if it can't connect it will try the next three sequential ports as well (e.g., 6509 -> 6510 -> 6511 -> 6512).
If you are using a firewall you may see a warning on starting GameMaker that network access is requested. You should allow this.
Similarly, you may see a network access request by the micro web server application the first time you try to open the manual or build any project for HTML5 or GX.games - you must allow this otherwise your system will block the web server from working.
The default port used for serving the offline manual is 51290, but this can be changed in Preferences > General > Help.
For HTML5 and GX.games builds, that should be all you need to do; however, if your network setup still blocks any of this, then you can customise the settings for the webserver in Preferences > Platform Settings for the relevant platform.
GameMaker also runs a server in the background so you can deploy your GX.games projects automatically on any Android and iOS mobile devices you have connected to GameMaker. If the MQTT server is blocked, then you will not be able to detect Android/iOS phones to deploy GX.games builds onto at the end of your builds (which is entirely up to you).
This will likely cause a local network access firewall prompt the first time you start GameMaker.
If you have any network/firewall issues with trying to use this functionality, please see our Helpdesk guide about this server.
There is an important distinction to make here before we begin:
- Online websites will always use the content for the current Monthly/Beta/LTS release (depending on which URL you visited)
- Offline manuals will always be the latest version available at the time you last chose to download a manual
So bear this in mind if you want to use older or newer GameMaker releases, as in both cases you might not be viewing the manual that matches your older GameMaker version.
The offline manual is a .zip file saved on your local disk and each page you request is extracted to your temp folder and opened in your default web browser by the micro web server.
Be aware we will generally only publish an updated copy of the downloadable zips each time we do a major release, but on the odd occasion there is a major change required to the manual to correct wrong/missing information then we will of course do an interim release - at which point GameMaker will notify you a new manual is available for download.
If you change your default save location, we recommend using a folder on the main OS drive (likely the same disk GameMaker is installed on).
Be aware your choice of save location can impact on build times and can in some extreme cases cause saving issues, so we do NOT recommend any of the following:
| Location/Device | Why You Should Not Use |
|---|---|
| Network Drives | The extra latency involved in this will impact build times (potentially substantially) and may also cause issues for the file watcher, as described in the next section of this FAQ |
| USB Drives | We do not recommend using detachable USB drives for build folders at all (even if they are high-speed devices) |
| OneDrive Dropbox Google Drive iCloud and similar |
We strongly advise against using these external applications to host your project source, as they will lock your files in order to do their own job of syncing your files with the cloud. This can often cause: builds to fail or have stale content, newly-created assets "disappearing" after you close GameMaker, changes made to your project being undone/removed stuff coming back, and in extreme circumstances can result in entire project corruption errors. These are all beyond GameMaker's ability to fix, as it's an external program correctly editing the files as you asked it to do (in some cases when GameMaker isn't even open), so it's far safer to just not use these locations. Be aware that in Windows 11 and 10, following various Windows Updates versions, OneDrive will ask you if you want it to manage parts of your user folder, and if you say yes your "My Documents" is placed inside your OneDrive folder and becomes cloud storage. GameMaker has already been changed to avoid saving files in "My Documents", but if your GM Preferences point to "My Documents" then we would recommend you move your projects to a different place and then you change GameMaker's Preferences to match wherever you chose. |
If you want a shared location to work together in a team, we would always suggest a proper online source control service like Github (other providers are also available, but we use GitHub ourselves within GameMaker for bug-reporting).
If for some reason you cannot use these free and reliable online hosting services, team members should always instead work on copies of the project locally on their machines, then Export and place only GameMaker's .yyz archive files in these shared/networked locations.
GameMaker can monitor your project's save area on disk for external changes (such as you editing your sprites or sounds in an external editor of your choice). It does this via monitoring the timestamps for when your files were last edited, and it will show a popup if it detects a change has been made.
This dialog looks like this (your paths will be different, so we have just pixelated ours):
If this dialog appears after you have been editing your files outside GameMaker, then all is correct. You now have the option to Reload (keep your external changes) or Save (keep the content GameMaker knows about and discard your external changes).
However, if you have not followed the recommendations and steps higher up in this guide yet, then you may see that dialog when you're not expecting to, because the timestamps on your files may be beyond the range the file watcher is set to tolerate before it thinks the file has been edited externally.
If you have that problem, we would recommend you follow all of the above sections of this guide first, so any AV client is configured properly and you're saving your files in a suitable location, and if that still fails to fix it, then you should try relaxing the timings for the file watcher so it scans the folders less frequently.
Do this by typing larger values in the Preferences field shown below:
If you find that doing this still isn't resolving the issue, or you don't want the ability to edit your files outside GameMaker anyway, then you can turn the file watcher off by simply unticking the checkbox and restarting GameMaker.
If you perform a drive backup (such as Time Machine on a Mac), a drive encryption option, a full-system antivirus scan, or any other drive-access intensive processes which will affect the location where your files are being stored, then these may cause your builds to fail or even for the file watcher to lock GameMaker while it waits for files to become available.
We would of course suggest you pause these jobs before you start to work in GameMaker, or reschedule them to start another time, as there is no way GameMaker can run as fast as normal if your entire system is running slow at that time.