The following is provided as a simplified overview of our Asset licenses.
Nothing written here overrules our license terms nor is legally binding or contractual.
Always refer to the actual Candy Arts licenses for the most accurate information.

Budget

If you create a project under our Indie licenses, you need to track the money you spend on it:
• The Free and Indie tiers have budget limits: when a project exceeds those limits, it must be licensed under the Professional tier.
• The Professional tier requires that Major Assets pay fees based on the project’s budget.

What counts in the budget:
• Employee salaries/wages for work on or related to a project.
• Commissioned work (e.g. paying an artist to make custom art assets).
• Digital asset purchases (e.g. ready-made art assets).
• Software license fees (e.g. 3D design software).
• Marketing costs (e.g. paying for ad space somewhere).
• Media licensing costs (e.g. fees or royalties for the use of music).
• Third-party services (e.g. legal advice, accounting services, server hosting).
• Distribution costs (e.g. shipping physical copies, hosting a game for download…).
• Operating costs (e.g. hosting and running game servers after release).
• The budget of Expansions, Access Products and Alternate Versions (see Related Works).

What doesn’t count:
• Payments made to Candy Arts, such as license fees or royalties.
• Commissions that stores or payment processors take on sales.
• Hardware purchases.
• Your own time and work.
• Learning costs (e.g. tutorials or courses).
• General overhead not specific to your project (e.g. renting an office, electricity bills…).

Some expenses can be split or only partially counted:
• Expenses can’t normally be split between multiple projects: the full cost must be counted for each project.
• Salaries can be counted in proportion to the work performed on a project.
• Software license fees don’t count for months where the software wasn’t used for a project.
• The above are subject to specific conditions: see the actual license terms.

What happens if you exceed the budget limits?
• Only the Free and Indie tiers have a budget limit, set at €7’500.
• This is a separate limit for each project: you can work on two Indie projects with a budget of €7’000 each.
• If you exceed the limit, your project must upgrade to the Professional tier, which has no budget limits.

How are budget-based fees calculated?
• Fees are calculated for each €25’000 interval in a project’s budget, starting from €0.
• For each interval, the project must pay Candy Arts a set fee for each Major Asset. The amount of that fee is written inside the Asset’s Usage License.
• For example, if a project has a budget between €0 to €25’000, that’s one interval; if a project has a budget between €25’000 and €50’000, that’s two intervals; and so on… If an Asset’s fee is €250 per interval, a project with a budget spanning two intervals owes €500.
• Fees are only owed once for any amount of Budget. For example, the Budget of Expansions is added to your project’s Budget, but either your project or the Expansion would pay fees on that amount, not both.
• See the Payments page for payment options.