If you're a game dev and you use Unity as your main work tool, you're probably aware of the bad news by now. Basically, with the new pricing plans changes, Unity is going to charge $0,20 (if you use Unity Personal or Plus) for each time your games gets installed and played, starting on 01/01/2024. Now, let's take in account that:

✦ If your game gets pirated: you get no profit for that game and you owe Unity $0,20.

✦ If your game is sold on a charity bundle: another $0,20 to Unity.

✦ Your game is purchased by the same person on different platforms: $0,20 for each platform.

✦ ONE SINGLE PERSON installs and uninstalls your game continually for a single day: you just get one payment and pays $0,20 to Unity for each time that player installed your game.

✦ "Oh, my game was released 3 years ago! I should be fine!" Yeah, no. This is valid to already released games as well.

See how that becomes a huge problem to everyone, specially indie devs? Lots of devs are worried for themselves and their projects, since they spent so much time (sometimes years) learning the best ways to use the software and now they'll be forced to make a tough decision: stay with Unity or move to a new engine.
Personally speaking, my trust on Unity has been broken to a point of no return. Even if they decide to go back on this decision, I can no longer trust a company who is willing to change the rules of the game with so little concern for they user base. I have a mid-development game made on Unity, and I already started learning Godot to remake everything. It's gonna be a long and difficult journey, but I can't just throw away so much effort and study time I've applied on my dream to release my first big game.

That being said, I've gathered some game engines that might help other game developers if they decide Unity is not a reliable source anymore.

Unreal Engine

Unreal engine is vastly used on the game industry by large studios creating AAA titles and also by small indie devs. You can find a plenty of tutorials for this engine online, and once you get the hang of it, it becomes really easy and fast to create something fun in here. You can make your games using C++ or blueprints (visual scripting based on nodes). It's free to use and you only have to pay for it after your game sells above a certain threshold.

Godot

Godot is used by a large amount of indie developers and is gaining more and more users each day. It uses GDScript, C# and visual scripting for it's game logics. It's capable of creating 2D and 3D games and is completely free. You can find some great youtube channels online with lots of great tutorials and it's a fairly simple engine to start learning.

Game Maker

Game Maker is another well known game engine wich can be used to make some incredible 2D games (did you know that Undertale, Hotline Miami and Hyper Light Drifter were all made on Game Maker?). You can use GML Code to write your games and there's a free version of the engine, so you can think about subscription plans later. Prices of the subscriptions are not so high, too!

Construct 3

Construct 3 works on the browser, so there's no need to download anything to your machine. There are 3 subscription plans, It's made to create 2D games just like Game Maker and is super easy to start using. There's no need for coding skills and you don't have to pay anything after your game is released!

Bevy

Bevy is a completely free and open source game engine that can be used for both 2D and 3D games. It uses Rust programming language to build it's games logics.

Flax

Flax is said to be the closest Unity engine there's out there. It's free to use and you'll only have to pay after your game is released and sells above a certain threshold. It supports C#, C++ and visual scripting.

Extra Hint

At the moment, I'm taking some time to learn Unreal and Godot. If you've ever used an online forum to try get some help, you might've encountered some answers from people who are not really interested in helping. Not that it's a bad place to look for help, but if like me you're tired of reading answers like:
✦ "Google it." (and you probably ended up on that forum through a Google search!)
✦ "It's on the documentation" (maybe you've already read the documentation and need some extra explanations?)
✦ "Are you dumb?" (yeah, not helpfull at all)

Well, you know who doesn't have a ego? ChatGPT.

Even though ChatGPT 3 is not fully updated, it still has some valuable information that could help you on your game dev journey. ChatGPT has helped me a lot with basic stuff and translating my knowledge in Unity to other game engines. It's an amazing teacher and it could help you too! Also, you can always ask it to give you simpler explanations or to try to explain everything to you again in other words. Give it a try!

Well, I think that's it. I hope you all have an amazing day and don't let this whole pricing thing get in your way.
Wish you all the best, always. 💖