Of course it is not really thought to be a free gift. It was a trial to catch some modding people, to get them as new customers for Max. But they gave GMax up. Probably because modders still did not buy a tool that costs more than 5,000 Euros here in Europe. They used scripts to export illegally and they used Warez. So it did not make much sense in the end.

My advice is to not touch any Autodesk product. These tools are reported to be instable, they are expensive and yearly upgrades are expensive as well. Workflow is also not the best in terms of modelling. Our customers often complain that they cannot read FBX files well in Max, while the same FBX files read well in cheap tools like Ultimate Unwrap 3d, in Gamestudio or Unity 3d.