Seller Terms
Last updated November 2, 2026
These terms apply when you sell on Onceworlds: games, pages, assets, video, audio and books. They add to the Terms of Service and the Privacy Policy. You accept them when you start selling in Settings → Selling.
1. Onceworlds sells for you
Onceworlds is the merchant of record. When someone buys your item, Onceworlds sells it to them on your behalf: the buyer pays Onceworlds, our name is on their card statement, the item is delivered on Onceworlds, and we handle tax, refunds and chargebacks. You keep ownership of your work (Terms 3), and the buyer gets the license you picked (section 10).
2. Who can sell
- Your Onceworlds account must be at least 14 days old, have a verified email or GitHub connected, and not be banned.
- You need a Stripe Express account in a country we can pay: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland or a country of the European Economic Area. Stripe checks who you are, and the Stripe Connected Account Agreement covers your Stripe account.
- You must be 18 or older. Younger creators can sell only through a parent or guardian's own account.
- Anyone can still publish free items.
3. Prices and fees
- You set a fixed price, or pay what you want with a minimum. Paid prices start at $1. Tax is added on top at checkout and never comes out of your share.
- Onceworlds' fee is 10% of the price, or 5% with Pro.
- Stripe's card fee for the payment comes out of your share too. A $10 sale with a $0.59 card fee pays you $8.41 (10% fee).
- New sellers' prices go up to $25, and a pay-what-you-want payment up to $50; established sellers' up to $100 and $250. A price change applies to new checkouts only, at most 3 times a day.
4. Payouts
- We pay you only by transfer to your own Stripe Express account, and Stripe pays out to your bank weekly. We never pay anyone else for your sales, and there's no balance to move between accounts.
- Your bank details are with Stripe. Linking another Stripe account needs a fresh sign-in and a confirmation by email, and your releases wait 7 days after it.
- Settings → Selling shows your balance: on hold, releasing, paid out and owed.
5. Holds and seller tiers
Each sale's money is released to you after a hold:
- New sellers: 14 days after the sale, and your first release no earlier than 30 days after your first sale. Up to $1,000 is released in any 7 days; the rest waits. At most 3 paid items, each reviewed before it lists.
- Established sellers: 7 days after the sale, and up to $10,000 released in any 7 days. You become established automatically 30 days after your first sale, with 25 paid orders from 15 different buyers, a refund rate under 10%, no dispute lost in 90 days and nothing on hold.
- We may make a seller trusted, or set a different tier, fee or limit for an account.
6. What we may hold, refund or withhold
- We may hold a sale past its release date while we review it: for example when you and the buyer look connected, one card buys from you on several accounts, a few buyers make most of your sales, your sales jump suddenly, your refunds or disputes run high, or a new seller's buyer never opened the item. We may pause all your releases while we look.
- We may refund buyers from money we hold for you, and take back money already paid out (a Stripe transfer reversal), for refunds (section 7), disputes (section 8), takedowns (section 11), fraud, or a ban. If your account is banned, sales not yet paid out are refunded to their buyers; for fraud, sales already paid out may be refunded too, and we may withhold what's left.
- What we can't take back is owed: your later sales pay it off first.
7. Refunds
- Instant: within 48 hours of buying, a buyer who downloaded nothing and played under 2 minutes can refund it themselves. Your share comes back off your balance; the card fee is ours.
- Requested: within 90 days of buying, a buyer may ask for a refund and say why. Answer within 7 days in Settings → Selling: refund it, or decline and say why. With no answer, or when the buyer contests your decline within 7 days, we decide. An item not as described, broken or missing files is refunded at your cost, the card fee included; when we refund for another reason, the card fee is ours. A buyer who used an item and changed their mind isn't owed a refund.
- By you: you can refund any sale at any time. The card fee is yours.
- By us: for fraud, takedowns, purchases held for checks that we couldn't clear, or a banned seller. Your share comes back; the card fee is ours.
- A refund gives the buyer back the price and tax, ends their access, and takes your share of the sale back off your balance.
8. Chargebacks
- A buyer's dispute with their bank comes to us, and we answer it with what we have: the item and its license, the receipt, and what the buyer downloaded or played.
- While a dispute is open, that sale's share is held; if it was already paid out and the dispute is yours to bear, it's taken back.
- Fraud disputes (the cardholder says they didn't make the purchase) are ours to bear, unless you're connected to the buyer. Other disputes (not received, not as described and the like) are yours: if we lose, you lose that sale's share. If we win, it comes back.
- Stripe's dispute fees are always ours.
9. What you may sell
- Only your own work, or work you have the right to sell under its license (assets, music, fonts and code included).
- Describe each item accurately: what it is, what's inside, and whether it was made with AI. Don't replace an item with something less after people have bought it.
- No programs to install (.exe, .app, .apk and the like), anywhere in a file.
- No sexual content of any kind in paid items, and nothing the Terms of Service forbid anywhere on Onceworlds.
- Not for sale: gambling, accounts, currency or items of other games, cheats, keys for other stores, cracked or leaked software, services, and physical goods.
- Don't ask buyers to pay you anywhere else (another payment service, a tip jar, crypto, "message me to buy") in items, descriptions, games or chat.
- New sellers' paid items are reviewed before they list, and changes our checks flag (a copy of someone else's item, an item that lost most of what it had) are reviewed again. We may refuse or remove any item.
10. Licenses
Each paid item says what its buyers may do with it. You pick one:
- Personal use
- Use in your own projects, commercial included, no resale
- CC0 (public domain)
- CC BY (credit the creator)
- A short license in your own words
Buyers get that license from you, and you can't take it back from people who bought the item. They keep access when you update or unlist the item, stop selling it, or leave Onceworlds: they own the item, not one version of it.
11. Copyright
Anyone who believes an item infringes their copyright can send a notice with the copyright form. We take the item down and tell you who sent the notice and what they said about their work. If you believe it's a mistake, you can send a counter-notice from the link we email you; the item comes back 10 business days later unless the claimant tells us they've gone to court. Buyers from the 60 days before a takedown are refunded from your balance. Sellers with 3 upheld takedowns can't sell any more, and we may close the accounts of repeat infringers.
12. Taxes
- As merchant of record, Onceworlds collects and pays the sales tax and VAT on your sales. We don't sell to buyers in places where we can't collect it yet.
- Stripe collects your tax details when you set up your account, and sends Form 1099-K to US sellers past the IRS threshold. Your tax forms are in your Stripe dashboard.
- Your own income tax, and any other tax where you live, are yours to handle. We don't give tax advice.
13. Stopping and closing your account
- You can stop selling at any time by making your items free. Buyers keep what they bought.
- You can delete your account once nothing is unsettled (no sales on hold or waiting to pay out, no balance owed either way, no open refund request or dispute) and 120 days after your last sale, the card networks' chargeback window.
- After that we keep the records of your sales and payouts, your Stripe account's id, your country and your tier, as tax and payment law requires. Your Stripe account stays with Stripe under its own terms.
14. Changes
We'll post changes here and update the date above. Changes apply to sales made after that date. If you keep selling after a change, the new terms apply.