Every year we round up all the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for game developers and 2021 is no exception. The follow are the best deals we located for game development software, tools and assets. Be sure to check the GFS Discord for more deals throughout the weekend.
Software
Applications, Game Engines & Assets
Unity have 500 assets on sale 50% off, then added another 200+ on Black Friday, sale ends on December 4th. Additionally Unity are running lightning sales with up to a 90% savings on assets all throughout the sale.
The Unreal Engine marketplace has their Black Friday deal on until December 3rd with hundreds of assets up to 70% off.
Get 3D Coat 2021 for 80€ off, and 3D Coat Textura for 30€ Off.
Get 20% off across the entire store.
Get Ableton Live, upgrades and packs 25% Off
Subscribe to Creative Cloud for 40% off, while Substance 3D subscriptions are 50% off.
All Affinity Products such as Designer and Photo 30% off. Learn more about Affinity Designer here.
Black Friday/Cyberweek deal still “coming soon”
Daily sales + free sound effects with purchases.
Get up to $100 USD/Euro off BitWig Studio.
Get 25% off thousands of items.
Up to 70% off 3D models.
Save 40% – 68% off on various Clip Paint Studio versions
Game development asset library subscription currently discounted for Black Friday (not sure the amount of the discount, site is unclear)
Save up to $260 on Corel programs including Corel Draw, Painter, Paintshop Pro and more
Get 50% off models store wide, save up to 70% off first 3 items of your choice.
Get 30% off EmberGen Indie license using code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout.
Get 50% off site wide on models, courses, etc.
Save over $400 on FL Studio + All plugins bundle.
Save 50% off on stock footage subscriptions
Save up to 60% off game development assets on GameDev marketplace from Friday thru Monday.
Get up to 30% off and free shipping on Huion graphic tablets.
Not technically a Black Friday sale, but there are currently 3 bundles running on Humble of interest to game developers between now and Cyber Monday.
- Create With Visual Excellence Bundle (Corel Painter and Video Studio)
- Build Roblox Games (Roblox Training Courses from Zen)
- Maps Bonanza (Campaign Cartographer Learn More Here)
- BOOM Royalty Free Sounds
Fanatical also have several game development relevant bundles running. Be sure to add the code GAMEFROMSCRATCH10 to save an additional 10%
- 10,000+ Royalty Free Music & Sounds Bundle
- AppGameKit Bundle
- Game Graphics Designer Bundle
- MAGIX Music Software Bundle
- Multiple Book Bundles (Unity, Blender, Unreal Engine, etc)
Itch.io has a number of game development assets on sale among their indie game catalog, but unfortunately does not include good filtering capabilities to show just the gamedev related assets. Some examples are Kenney’s Asset Forge (learn more), 1Bit Dragon, Pixel Over (learn more), Pixel FX Designer (learn more), and more.
Get 50% off entire stores collection of 3D models and scenes.
Get $15 off this mouse smoothing software for Photoshop and other applications making line drawing smoother.
Save between 33-66% off on MAGIX audio software such as ACID, Music Maker, Sound Forge and more.
Get 20% Off Marmoset Toolbag 4 licenses (Learn More)
Get 40% off personal edition licenses, which are already by discounted 30%.
Black Friday Sale! 35% off + FREE shipping on domestic orders over $50. Use code BLACKFRIDAY35. Ends Nov. 29.
Discount on OctaneRender, among is hard to determine, as it’s built into the subscription price already.
Save 50% off on lifetime license.
Get 40% off personal and premium subscriptions on PluralSight training.
Buy 2 get 50% off and other items 50% off through Cyber Monday.
Use code BLACKFRIDAY to save 30% off on 3D models through Monday.
Smith Micro
Up to 50% off sound effect libraries.
Save up to 50% off (products such as Cubase) using code CYBERWEEKS21 at checkout.
Save 30% off World Creator.
Steam Autumn Sale (Store Link)
Steam is also having their annual autumn sale with tons of game development software available at discounted pricing.
- App Game Kit (Multiple) – 83% Off (Learn More) [Better Deal on Fanatical right now]
- Asesprite – 30% Off (Learn More)
- CopperCube 6 Game Engine – 70% Off (Learn More)
- Crocotile 3D — 10% Off (Learn More)
- GameGuru – 70% Off (Learn More) [Better Deal on Fanatical right now]
- Leadwerks Game Engine – 80% Off
- Marmoset Hexels 3 – 50% Off (Learn More)
- Mindtex 2 – 60% Off
- Pixel Game Maker – 67% Off (Learn More)
- Pixel FX Designer — 25% Off (Learn More)
- Pixel Over — 50% Off (Learn More)
- Pro Motion NG – 50% Off
- RPG Maker (Multiple) – 70-80% Off
- Rytmik Studio – 50% Off
- S2Engine – 80% Off (Learn More)
- Silo 2 – 30% Off
- SMILE Game Builder – 80% Off
- Space Galaxy – Graphics Pack – 50% Off
- Spriter Pro – 40% Off
- Spritestack — 20% Off
- Substance Painter 2022 — 33% Off
- Substance Designer 2022 — 33% Off
- Substance Sampler 2022 — 33% Off
- Substance Stager 2022 — 33% Off
- Visual Novel Maker — 70% Off
All Sound Particles licenses are currently up to 65% off. You can learn about Sound Particles here.
Save up to 50% off 3D models through Monday.
This one runs until the end of the year, get audio plugins and premium memberships at a 25% discount, with higher discounts the more items you purchase.
Hardware
Computers & Devices. If you are looking for a laptop for game development, check out our 2021 laptop guide here for recommendations and specs.
Acer/Asus/MSI — Nothing in North America
Apple’s Black Friday sale isn’t actually active until Black Friday… how odd eh?
Dell has a wide variety of laptops including XPS and Alienware on sale as well as random door crasher deals throughout the day.
HP are running door crasher deals throughout the day, save up to 77% off in door crasher deals.
Doorcrasher laptop sales up to 70% off, random sales across the site.
Up to $600 off Surface tablets, $200 on Surface Laptops, plus misc other Windows laptops on sale… huge savings on Surface Duo.
Again, just a broad sale across a lot of computer hardware and accessories.
Up to 50% off a wide swath of Razer stuff, from keyboards to laptops. Laptop deals are mostly on last years model but are huge, like $1300 off.
Lots of gear, computers etc on sale, free shipping.
Amazon
You Know… It’s Amazon
- Amazon Daily Black Friday Deals Portal
- GAOMON 15.6″ 1080P Drawing Tablet
- Razer Kishi For Android 44% Off (Not relevant, I just absolutely love this thing)
- Razer Blade 15 Advance 2080 GPU $1500 Off!
- HUION Tablets Up To 30% Off
- MSI Laptops (Kinda Meh)
- Samsung Galaxy S7 Tablet $150 Off
- Adobe Creative Cloud Full Access 1 Year Subscription $240 Off
- Parallels Desktop 17 1 Year Subscription 20% Off
You can learn more about the 2021 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales for game developers in the video below. Leave a comment on the video or the GFS discord if you spot another deal you want to share with your fellow game developers and I will add it to the list. Links above may contain an affiliate code that pays GFS a small royalty if used (and thanks if you do!)