Creator Commerce Policy

Candidate rules for creator memberships, digital products, paid content, premium maps, modules, downloads, and Aether-powered creator support.

Engineering draft candidate · No effective date · Not approved for production use

Unapproved policy candidate

This candidate describes implemented controls for review and testing. Owner approval, qualified legal and tax review, production policy configuration, and launch evidence remain pending. It is not an effective commerce policy and does not authorize paid Exchange sales.

Eligible offerings

Verified creators may offer lawful digital products and access that they have the right to provide, including:

  • Creator memberships and member-only content.
  • Original videos, maps, VTT modules, assets, and digital downloads.
  • Creator-store products that are accurately described and delivered through supported Aethera features.
  • Aether cheers that do not promise an undisclosed product, investment return, prize, or service.

Proposed paid Exchange availability is limited to supported United States buyers. Unsupported paid regions remain blocked until their legal, tax, consumer, and operational requirements are approved.

Standard commercial license

Eligible content uses one Aethera Exchange Commercial Content License v1.0 Candidate. It permits commercial finished projects and use by a GM's campaign table while prohibiting raw resale, redistribution, account sharing, sublicensing, and competing asset libraries. Personal-only, custom, and incompatible open-license options remain unavailable for launch.

AI content disclosure

Every listing and release must label each material medium as no generative AI, AI-assisted, or AI-generated under the AI Content Disclosure Policy Candidate. “No AI” cannot be combined with assisted or generated for the same medium. A disclosure is not permission to use the content for datasets, training, fine-tuning, retrieval corpora, or generative cloning.

Prohibited commerce

  • Illegal goods or services, stolen content, piracy, malware, credential theft, fraud, or deceptive listings.
  • Regulated financial products, gambling, unlawful contests, weapons, controlled substances, or restricted adult services.
  • Listings that violate intellectual-property, privacy, publicity, consumer-protection, or sanctions laws.
  • Attempts to move payment off-platform to avoid fees, verification, refunds, disputes, or safety controls.
  • Misleading claims that Aethera Verify is a public identity endorsement or guarantee of quality.

Listing and delivery standards

  • Describe the offering, price, billing interval, access conditions, and material limitations clearly.
  • Deliver purchased access or files promptly through the stated Aethera workflow.
  • Keep member benefits and recurring offerings materially available while billing remains active.
  • Show the exact seller, standard license, AI disclosure, final-sale rule, and material compatibility limits before a buyer commits.
  • Provide reasonable customer support and do not request sensitive payment or identity details by message or email.

Exchange payment model

  • Aethera creates each one-time Exchange payment on the platform and sends the creator proceeds to the seller's connected Stripe account as the destination. It is not a direct charge on the seller account.
  • The candidate Aethera fee is 12.5% of the discounted pretax product price. Creator proceeds exclude tax and equal discounted pretax product revenue minus the Aethera fee.
  • The provider application-fee amount retains the separately recorded Aethera fee plus platform-liable sales tax. Aethera pays Stripe processing fees for the destination charge.
  • First-party services, creator memberships, and historical transactions retain their separately recorded payment models.

See the unapproved Creator Fee Schedule candidate.

Memberships and buyers under 18

Creator memberships use their separately recorded recurring payment flow and the Creator Membership Terms Candidate. A buyer must be at least 13. A verified adult guardian must approve the exact terms and complete payment for a buyer under 18; a changed price, tier, license, or policy requires new approval.

Refunds and disputes

Buyers can submit Exchange refund requests from purchase history. Sellers can review assigned requests in Marketplace Studio, and authorized administrators have a separate escalation and decision path. Approved destination-charge refunds use the original platform payment and exact line-level pretax, tax, Aethera-fee, and creator-proceeds allocations.

Stripe debits destination-charge disputes from the platform. Creator proceeds are not reduced for an Exchange dispute unless a separately approved recovery policy is actually executed through the audited workflow; no such creator-recovery policy is currently approved. Aethera may suspend or revoke affected entitlements as verified refund or dispute state changes. See the unapproved Refund Policy candidate.

Review and enforcement

Aethera may hide a listing, pause new creator transactions, place a platform hold, preserve evidence, require remediation, or terminate commerce access when needed for safety, legal compliance, payment risk, or policy enforcement. Stripe verification status cannot be manually fabricated by an Aethera administrator.

Signed-in users can report an Exchange product or review from its product page. Eligible sellers can appeal rejected or quarantined submission decisions from Marketplace Studio moderation history. A report or appeal does not promise a particular outcome or review time.

Review gates still open

  • Owner and qualified legal review have not approved these commerce rules.
  • Tax, digital-goods, refund, intellectual-property, and allowed-region review remain pending.
  • No approved version or effective date is configured for this candidate.
  • Production provider, moderation, refund, reconciliation, and fail-closed evidence remains pending.

Acknowledging this test-mode candidate does not enable paid creator features. Aethera will publish a dated, effective policy before live creator commerce is offered.

Reporting a concern

Use the product or review report action for Exchange policy concerns, the copyright and DMCA form for a formal rights notice, the seller's documented channel for ordinary product help, or Aethera Support for account, billing, access, or private safety concerns. Support email is loaded from live configuration: Loading support email.