If I put a "Donate to support other developments" is this still personal/non-commercial use?

Also if I’m making a trashy joke game on itch.io, and e.g using a beer brand, but not in a bad light, is this okay or i should change it to something similar unbranded? (to not lose the effect)

Other variants that i won’t use, but still interested:

  1. What about a game which put the donation links directly but doesn’t affect game in any way?
  2. What if the game still gives you something but it is just a visual hat?

I’m not a lawyer but I’d probably play it safe and not include any brands and avoid giving rewards for donations. As far as I know donations are non-commercial and I’d expect it to be fine to include a donate link directly in the game. I think as soon as you give something in return for a donation it becomes an IAP instead. Not sure if it might be ok if you don’t advertise it e.g. it’s a bonus reward that the donator doesn’t know about until after the payment. But it’s probably safer to not include it.

Why does it need to be personal/non-commercial? Is this to get into a itch.io category or to avoid a Unity Pro subscription? Can’t really see a game making more than $200k in donations but I feel like Unity would require a Pro license even for donations (any revenue).

If literally does not matter if it’s for non-commercial use, using brand iconography for any reasons that fall outside of actual jurisdictional fair use laws (which are much more restrictive than people think) is a no go.

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One of the fun little details about trademarks (brands are trademarked) is that the company can’t just ignore someone using it without their permission. If they don’t defend it they automatically lose it.

Like @Murgilod mentioned sometimes you can be protected by fair use but there are very specific situations where that applies and even then they’re very restrictive. If you don’t know if they apply they most likely don’t.