Corona Is Now Free

Corona is a popular 2D cross platform Lua based game engine.  It was previously available in two editions, the free version and the enterprise version.  As of yesterday, this is no longer the case.  Going forward the Enterprise version is now simply called Corona and is completely free.

From the email I received:

June 22, 2017

Oh, and we are changing our product name: it’s now Corona!

Starting with daily build 2017.3100, you will find that we’re offering a single product named Corona. This is a combined product which includes our traditional Simulator-based product and our native-based product in a single download.

Perhaps more importantly, we have removed all revenue sharing requirements and revenue limits associated with Corona Native. You can build your own plugins if you wish, or you can continue to use our fantastic suite of ready-to-go plugins, saving you critical time in your development process.

That brings us to the Corona-branded splash screen. While Enterprise subscribers were formerly able to build apps without the splash screen, all developers must now purchase/own the Splash Screen Control plugin to customize or disable it. However, to ease in the transition, we are granting existing Enterprise customers a 1-year license to the plugin.

Finally, we are introducing new support plans. If you’re an existing Enterprise “Small Business” subscriber, you will receive one year of our Priority support subscription, while Enterprise “Unlimited” subscribers will receive one year of our Priority Plus support.

Please take a moment and read our announcement about the changes, and join us in the forums to discuss these wonderful changes. Free is awesome!


At this point you may be wondering how they will make money if they no longer sell a product? They actually cover that fact in their announcement:

Q. How does Corona Labs make money under the free model?

A. First and foremost, we want to emphasize the value in using our current ready-to-go monetization plugins. Between paid advertising plugins, revenue-share-based plugins, and free monetization plugins where we have a partnership with the provider, we encourage you to build apps that use advertising as a component of your income strategy. The more successful your app is, the more successful we will be.

The Corona Marketplace is also an area we want to see grow. We encourage you to begin there and browse for any art/audio assets you may need, as well as game templates which can be used to kick-start your own projects. We also want to encourage our developers to become content providers for the marketplace! If you have a game template that others can use as a framework — even if it’s a simple one — please submit it and create a new income stream for yourself as a Marketplace provider.

Another exciting development is that we are ramping up our publishing support. We are now working in cooperation with large, experienced publishers to make sure you have the best success possible. With our publishing services, you’ll gain access to pre-release services, cross-promotion, user acquisition, in-game analytics, App Store Optimization (ASO), and more.

What about people that already paid for Corona Enterprise?  Well, sorry to say, but you are out of luck.

GameDev News


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