Payments, Escrow & Refunds Policy

01Who we are, and what we are not

1.1This Policy is issued by [Plotore Ltd], a company registered in England and Wales under company number [company number], registered office [registered office] ("Plotore", "we", "us", "our"), operator of plotore.com (the "Platform").

1.2We are an intermediary. Scripts, story cards, pitches and commissioned work are supplied by independent Writers to Studios. Plotore is not the author, not the seller, and not a party to the licence, assignment or commission agreement between a Writer and a Studio — except where we are expressly named in that agreement as escrow administrator or as the party generating the contract.

1.3What we do provide: the Platform, identity and business verification, brief and pitch infrastructure, contract generation from versioned templates, escrow administration, milestone and acceptance tracking, watermarked file delivery, access logging, and the dispute process in section 10.

1.4We are not a bank, a law firm, an agent, a producer, or a guarantor of any deal. We do not warrant that any script will be produced, distributed, accepted by any platform, or commercially successful.

02The three money flows

Plotore handles three financially distinct things. They have different refund rules and this Policy treats them separately. Do not read a rule from one section across into another.

03Currency, tax and pricing

3.1All amounts are in pounds sterling (GBP) unless the Deal states otherwise.

3.2Deal values are agreed between Writer and Studio. Plotore's Commission is calculated on the Deal value and disclosed before the contract is signed. There are no undisclosed fees taken from either side.

3.3Studios pay any card, bank or currency-conversion charges levied by their own provider. Payouts to Writers are made to their registered payout method; receiving-bank or FX fees applied by the Writer's own bank are the Writer's.

3.4VAT. Subscription prices are stated [inclusive / exclusive] of UK VAT where applicable. Deal payments between Writer and Studio are between those parties; each is responsible for its own VAT position and invoicing. Plotore does not act as agent for VAT purposes on Deal payments.

3.5Writers are independent contractors, not employees of Plotore or of any Studio (unless a Studio separately employs them — see section 18). Writers are responsible for their own income tax, National Insurance or overseas equivalents.

04Escrow — how funds are held

4.1Funding comes first. No Milestone may begin until the Deal's escrow is funded in full. This is enforced in our systems, not just promised in prose.

4.2Where the money sits. Escrowed funds are held through our regulated payment provider in a flow segregated from Plotore's own operating funds. Plotore does not hold your money in its own bank account and cannot spend it.

4.3No interest. Escrowed funds do not earn interest for either party.

4.4Escrow is not a deposit account. It exists solely to fund a specific Deal. You may not fund escrow speculatively, store value on the Platform, or use escrow to move money for any purpose other than a genuine Deal. We will refuse, reverse and report attempts to do so.

4.5Regulatory position. Plotore's role in the payment flow is that of a platform operating through a regulated payment services provider. Confirm with counsel that your flow of funds is correctly structured — commercial agent exclusion, or the PSP as the regulated party — and that this clause describes it accurately before publishing.

05Milestones, delivery and acceptance

5.1Every Deal is milestoned. A spec sale is simply a Deal with one Milestone at 100%. Default shapes, unless the brief says otherwise:

5.2Milestone values are frozen at contract time. Once signed, the amount attached to a Milestone cannot be varied downward. Percentages across a Deal always total 100%.

5.3Delivery. The Writer uploads against the Milestone. Version history is retained and never overwritten. The Studio reads it watermarked, in-browser. The underlying file is not released for download until the Milestone is accepted and paid out.

5.4The Acceptance Window. On delivery, the Studio has [5] days — or the number stated in the brief — to do one of three things: accept (funds release), request revisions within the agreed allowance, or open a dispute under section 10.

5.6Auto-acceptance is not a waiver of quality. It releases payment. It does not extinguish a Studio's rights in respect of a deliverable that is materially not what was contracted for, where a dispute is opened under section 10 within [14] days of release.

06Revisions and change orders

6.1Revisions are capped. Each Milestone carries [2] rounds of revision as standard, set in the brief before any Writer pitches. A revision round is notes on what was contracted for — not a new brief.

6.2Uncapped free revisions are how writers end up working for nothing. We do not permit them. Once the allowance is used, further changes are Change Orders.

6.3Change Orders. If a Studio wants something outside the original brief — a different trope, a new ending, extra episodes, a restructure — that is a Change Order: separately described, separately priced, separately funded into escrow, and separately accepted. It may also carry additional days. Work does not start until it is funded.

6.4A Change Order is refundable on the same terms as any Milestone. Funded but not delivered, it refunds. Accepted, it releases.

07When a studio gets money back

Escrowed funds that have not yet been released are refundable to the Studio in the following circumstances. Released funds are not.

7.1Refunds are made to the original payment method within 14 days of being determined, and usually far sooner. Time for funds to appear is then a matter for your bank.

7.2  What is not refundable to a Studio

• Any Milestone that has been accepted, or auto-accepted, and released;
• Change of mind, change of slate, change of strategy, or the project being shelved;
• Dislike of a deliverable that meets the brief — creative preference is not a defect;
• Failure to review within the Acceptance Window;
• The commercial performance of anything produced from the work;
• Rejection of a production by any distribution platform;
• Option fees, save as set out in section 9.

08When a studio walks away — kill fees and reversion

8.1A Studio may terminate a Deal in progress. If it does:

• The Writer keeps everything already released, plus any kill fee stated in the contract for the stage reached;
• The balance of unreleased escrow is refunded to the Studio;
• Rights do not transfer. No assignment, licence or option takes effect in respect of unpaid work;
• The Writer's material reverts to the Writer in full and may be re-listed and sold elsewhere immediately.

8.2This is recorded against the Deal, and the reversion is reflected in the Writer's rights record so the script's availability is unambiguous to the next buyer.

8.3We do not treat termination as a black mark against a Studio provided the kill fee is honoured. Non-payment of a kill fee is a different matter, and is treated as non-payment under section 10.

09Option fees

9.1An option buys a Studio a defined exclusive window — typically 30–60 days — to decide whether to acquire.

9.2Option fees are non-refundable. You are buying time and exclusivity, and the Writer has taken the script off the market to sell it to you. That is the product, and it is delivered the moment the option starts.

9.3Option fees are credited against the purchase price if the option is exercised within its term.

9.4If the option lapses unexercised, the fee stays with the Writer and the script returns to the market automatically.

10Disputes

10.1Raise it on the Platform, not in a DM. Disputes must be opened through the Platform, against the relevant Deal or Milestone, within [14] days of the delivery or release complained of.

10.2What happens. Escrow relating to the disputed Milestone is frozen. Both parties are asked for a written position and evidence within [5] business days. We review the contract, the brief, the deliverables, the version history, the threaded notes and the access logs — all of which we hold, which is precisely why the work goes through the Platform.

10.3Outcomes. We may release in full to the Writer, refund in full to the Studio, direct a split, or direct a further revision round. We aim to decide within [10] business days.

10.4  What we will investigate

• Non-delivery and late delivery — objective, from the record.
• Delivery mismatch — did the deliverable meet the brief as contracted.
• Non-payment — including unpaid kill fees and unclaimed bonus triggers.
• Expression theft — copying of a script's actual expression: dialogue, structure, scene sequence, distinctive character detail.

10.6Our decision binds the escrow, not your legal rights. Our determination controls how we release the funds we hold. It is not arbitration and does not remove either party's right to pursue the other through the courts of England and Wales.

10.7Bad-faith disputes — raised to stall payment, to extract free revisions, or repeatedly and without substance — result in account restriction, loss of Acceptance Window protection, or removal from the Platform.

11Chargebacks

11.1Escrow exists so that no one needs a chargeback. If something has gone wrong, section 10 is faster and gets you a decision from someone who can actually see the file history.

11.2A chargeback raised against a released Deal payment is a breach of this Policy. We will contest it with the full evidence record — contract, signatures, delivery timestamps, hashes, watermarked view logs and acceptance records.

11.3Where a chargeback succeeds after funds have been released to a Writer, the Studio remains liable to Plotore for the reversed amount plus any provider fee, and the associated rights grant is suspended until resolved. A Studio cannot claw back the money and keep the licence.

11.4Accounts with chargebacks outstanding cannot post briefs, fund Deals, or download released files.

12Platform commission and other fees

12.1Our standard Commission on a Deal is [11]%, disclosed in full before the contract is signed. It falls as a Studio–Writer pair transacts more, to a floor of [6]%. Retainer work is charged at [5.5]%. Collaboration and revenue-share deals are charged a flat contract fee rather than a Commission, because there is no upfront sum to take a percentage of.

12.2Commission is refundable if the Deal is refunded in full before any Milestone releases, or if the contract is never signed. Where a Deal completes in part, Commission is retained proportionately on the released portion only.

12.3Commission is not refundable on Milestones that have released, on completed Deals, or because a party later regrets the arrangement.

12.4Contract generation fees, rush-brief premiums and verification fees, where charged, are for work done at the point of purchase and are non-refundable once performed — except where we have failed to perform.

12.5Placement / conversion fee. Where a Studio engages a Writer introduced through the Platform outside the Platform — as an employee, or off-book — within [12] months of the introduction, the placement fee set out in our Terms becomes payable. See also section 18.

13Subscriptions — Writer Pro and Studio plans

13.1What they cost. Writer Pro: £[X] per month. Studio plans: from £[X] per month. Prices and inclusions are set out on our pricing page and may change on [30] days' notice; changes never apply to a period already paid for.

13.2Renewal and cancellation. Subscriptions renew automatically until cancelled. You can cancel at any time from your account dashboard, in the same number of clicks it took to subscribe. We will not make you email us, phone us, or sit through a retention flow you cannot skip.

13.3Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. You keep your benefits until then. We do not refund part-months, and we do not bill you again.

13.5First-30-days goodwill. Separately from anything the law requires: if you subscribe to Writer Pro and it plainly hasn't worked for you in the first 30 days, write to us. We would rather refund you than keep £15 and an unhappy writer. Discretionary, not a rolling right, not available on repeat subscriptions.

13.6Business subscribers. Studio plans are business-to-business contracts and the consumer rights in 13.4 do not apply to them. 13.2 and 13.3 do.

13.7Non-payment. If a subscription payment fails we will retry and notify you. Persistent failure downgrades the account to free; it does not affect any funded Deal already in escrow, which continues to completion under its own contract.

14Rights and licences — summary only

14.1Deals on Plotore are done under a small number of solicitor-reviewed, versioned templates. Every signed contract records exactly which template version it used, and the exact terms merged into it.

14.2Rights are never a single yes/no flag. Every grant records grant type, languages, territories and term. That means a script can be sold in English for the UK and remain available in Chinese for Southeast Asia; a term-limited licence reverts to the Writer automatically on expiry, without either party having to remember; and perpetual worldwide grants are available as an explicit, separately-priced choice — never the default. No Writer will grant them by accident on this Platform.

14.5Collaboration deals carry three mandatory protections and we will not generate a contract without them: a minimum writer share; a share calculated on gross receipts and never "net profit" — which has a way of never existing; and a reversion deadline if the project is not produced within the agreed period.

14.6Bonus triggers may be attached at contract time — greenlight, release, view thresholds, paywall conversion, second season, long-form adaptation. Only events both parties can observe and evidence. Bonus payments become due when the trigger is evidenced, and are funded and released like any other Milestone.

15Author credit

15.1Every production made from work acquired through Plotore must carry appropriate authorship credit in the form specified in the Deal contract — typically "Story by [Writer]" or "Written by [Writer]", or the industry-standard equivalent for the territory.

15.2Where the production is listed on IMDb or an equivalent industry database, the Studio must credit the Writer as author.

15.3Credit obligations survive assignment. Buying the copyright does not buy the right to say you wrote it.

15.4Failure to credit is a breach of the Deal contract, is actionable by the Writer, and is grounds for us to restrict a Studio's access to the Platform.

16Restrictions on use

16.1  Studios and their personnel may not

• Redistribute, publish, share or upload any script or sample beyond the personnel who need it to evaluate or produce the work;
• Resell or re-list a script as a standalone literary product;
• List acquired material on any other marketplace;
• Claim authorship;
• Circulate a sample to a party that has not accepted the confidentiality terms;
• Attempt to strip, obscure or defeat a watermark;
• Use material accessed through the Platform, or its distinctive expression, for any purpose other than evaluation and production under the Deal.

16.3Writer warranties. Writers warrant that work is theirs, original, and does not infringe. Writers must declare their AI use honestly against every script — none, assisted, or AI-drafted — and that declaration is timestamped, carried into the contract as a warranty, and shown to Studios. A false declaration is a breach that voids the Deal, refunds the Studio, and results in removal from the Platform. Studios buy from Plotore because that declaration means something. We will protect it aggressively.

16.4What Plotore does with your material. We do not sell your scripts to anyone. We do not use your material to train generative AI models, and we do not licence it to anyone else to do so. We may process material internally on an automated basis for integrity and operational purposes only — plagiarism and expression-overlap detection, trope classification, matching briefs to scripts, and fraud prevention — and we may use anonymised, aggregated deal data to publish market statistics that never identify an individual Writer, Studio, script or price. Confirm this wording against your technical roadmap and your privacy policy before publishing: if you intend to train any model on user-submitted work, even a non-generative one, it must be described here accurately and consistently with your privacy notice.

17Files, watermarking and access logging

17.1Full scripts are never publicly readable. They are held encrypted and served through short-lived, access-controlled links.

17.2Samples and pre-release deliverables are read in-browser, watermarked with the viewing party's identity and the date. Downloadable copies are released after acceptance and payout.

17.3Every view is logged — who, what, when, how long. This is not incidental: it is the evidence base for section 10, and it is how a Writer can prove a Studio read a script it later claims never to have seen.

17.4Before first viewing any sample, a Studio must accept a just-in-time confidentiality and non-circumvention agreement. That acceptance is versioned and timestamped against the account.

17.5Storage. We retain released deliverables and contract records for as long as needed for licensing verification, tax and legal purposes. You remain responsible for keeping your own copy of anything you have bought. We are not a backup service and do not guarantee indefinite retention of superseded draft versions.

18Non-circumvention

18.1If a Studio is introduced to a Writer through Plotore, engagements with that Writer for vertical-drama scriptwriting are concluded through Plotore for [12] months from the introduction — or our standard Commission or placement fee remains payable.

18.2This is not us being possessive about relationships. Off-platform deals lose the writer their escrow protection, their acceptance-window protection, their contract, their reversion rights and their dispute route — which is exactly why the ones who leave are the ones who come back unpaid. Our commission falls the more a pair transacts: staying is cheaper than leaving, by design.

18.3Where a Studio hires a Platform Writer into employment, that is a good outcome and we would like to publicise it. Tell us, pay the placement fee, and we will put out the press release ourselves.

19Technical problems and access

19.1If a download link fails, a file is corrupted, or you cannot reach a deliverable you are entitled to, contact [support@plotore.com] within 7 days. We will restore access.

19.2Restoring access is not a refund — it is us fixing our own delivery. Refunds are governed by sections 7, 12 and 13.

19.3We aim to respond to payment, escrow and access enquiries within [1 business day], and to dispute submissions within the timescales in section 10.

19.4We do not guarantee uninterrupted availability of the Platform. Where an outage causes a Milestone or Acceptance Window to be missed, we will extend the affected deadline rather than penalise either party.

20Account suspension and fraud

20.1We may suspend an account, freeze escrow, or reverse a transaction where we have reasonable grounds to suspect fraud, impersonation, plagiarism, a false AI declaration, money laundering, or an attempt to use escrow other than for a genuine Deal.

20.2Suspension does not forfeit a Writer's earned money. Funds released or due in respect of accepted work are paid, subject to any dispute properly opened.

20.3If you believe your account has been used without your consent, contact us and your payment provider immediately.

20.4Studio verification — company registration, evidence of production activity — is a condition of posting briefs. Misrepresenting a Studio's identity, or posting briefs to harvest loglines with no intention of commissioning, results in permanent removal and, where appropriate, referral.

21Liability

21.1Nothing in this Policy limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

21.2Subject to 21.1, and to the fullest extent permitted by law, Plotore is not liable for:

• production costs, development spend or opportunity cost;
• rejection or removal of a production by any distribution platform or app store;
• audience performance, revenue, or commercial success of any production;
• acts, omissions, breaches or insolvency of a Writer or a Studio;
• disputes between a Writer and a Studio beyond our administration of escrow under section 10;
• loss of data or files where you have not kept your own copy.

21.3Cap. Plotore's total liability to any user in respect of any Deal is limited to the Commission we received on that Deal, and in respect of a Subscription to the fees paid in the preceding 12 months. Have counsel confirm this cap is reasonable under UCTA 1977 as against business users, and that it is not applied to consumers in a way a court would strike out.

21.4Scripts are creative works. Nobody — not the Writer, not us — warrants that any script will be produced, accepted, watched or profitable.

22Changes to this Policy

22.1This Policy is versioned. The version and effective date appear at the top, and superseded versions are archived and available on request.

22.2We will give at least [30] days' notice of material changes, by email and in-product.

23Governing law and jurisdiction

23.1This Policy and any dispute arising out of it are governed by the law of England and Wales.

23.2The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, save that a consumer may bring proceedings in the courts of their country of residence where the law gives them that right.

23.3Individual Deal contracts may specify their own governing law. Where they do, that governs that Deal. This Policy continues to govern the Platform relationship.

24Contact

Payments, escrow, refunds and disputes: [support@plotore.com]
Everything else: hello@plotore.com