Terms of Service

1. Eligibility, Accounts, and Identity Integrity

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of joining binding agreements to use the Service. You may use the Service only in jurisdictions where submission, payment, receipt of prize funds, and submission of your content are lawful.

• You must provide accurate, current, and complete registration, payment, and profile information.
• You may not impersonate another person, share credentials, or maintain multiple accounts for abusive, deceptive, or evasive purposes.
• You are responsible for all activity under your account, including actions taken through linked email, OAuth, or payment accounts.
• You must promptly notify us at legal@a2gig.com if you believe your account, device, or payment credentials have been compromised.

2. Nature of the Service and Operator Role

A2Gig provides an online environment in which one user may publish a skill-based competition with requirements, a prize, and a deadline. Other users may join, ask questions, submit work in Service-approved formats, receive competition-related submission comments, and receive payment if selected as a winner. The same account may create one competition and join another.

The Operator is a platform intermediary only. Unless mandatory law says otherwise, we are not a bank, money transmitter, trust company, fiduciary, settlement agent, broker, auctioneer, insurer, employment agency, talent agency, or party to the underlying creative or commercial arrangement between users.

Terms such as "funded", "pre-funded", "held", or similar labels describe how the Service displays a competition or payment. They do not, by themselves, create a separate legal trust account, fiduciary relationship, or statutory custody arrangement.

3. Limited License and Service Availability

Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access and use the Service for its intended purpose. We may modify, suspend, restrict, or discontinue any feature, category, integration, fee, limit, or process at any time, including for security, fraud, legal, operational, or payment-partner reasons.

• No part of the Service is sold to you.
• No uptime, availability, delivery speed, payout timing, selection outcome, revenue, or business result is guaranteed.
• We may apply usage caps, file size limits, anti-abuse controls, and manual or automated reviews at any time.

4. Competition Lifecycle and Submission Mechanics

Competitions move through draft, open, and closed states. Public availability, editing rights, payment actions, and file access depend on the applicable state, the relevant deadlines, and on whether you are the creator, an account, or an authorized Service operator.

• Open and closed competitions may be publicly visible. Draft competitions are not. Accounts must complete any required payout onboarding, join a competition, and then submit; the creator cannot submit to the creator's own competition.
• Competition pages, Q&A, and file access may change as a competition moves between draft, open, and closed states and as submission or winner-selection deadlines pass.
• The Service accepts one or more submission files, up to 500 GiB per asset, 2 TiB total per submission, and 10,000 files per submission, and may validate file type, file path, file size, and storage location before accepting a submission.
• Per-competition hourly submission caps may apply. The default is 10 submissions per account per competition per hour, but a competition-specific limit may differ.
• During an active competition, accounts generally cannot browse other accounts' submission files through the Service. Creators may access submission files as needed for evaluation and winner selection. Submission-specific chat inside the submission view is intended for the creator and the submitter only.
• Finalized submission files remain attached to the submission and available to creators through authorized Service download flows. Accounts do not have a self-service deletion path for finalized submission files. Short-lived download URLs and generated archive files may expire, and access may be blocked for policy enforcement, account restrictions, or legal or security reasons.

5. Payments, Stripe, and Platform Authorization

Paid features are processed through Stripe and related financial institutions. By using checkout, receiving payouts, or onboarding a connected payout account, you also agree to the applicable Stripe terms, policies, and connected-account documents available at https://stripe.com/legal and Stripe's privacy notice available at https://stripe.com/privacy.

You authorize us to create and manage Stripe Checkout sessions, initiate payment-related instructions permitted by these Terms, create or reconnect a Stripe Express connected account for payout onboarding where applicable, transmit required account, identity, transaction, and compliance metadata to Stripe, and instruct prize transfers, payment corrections, reversals, holds, or compliance actions as reasonably necessary to operate the Service and satisfy law, card-network, banking, and Service obligations.

• Creators pay exactly the displayed prize amount. No platform fee or separate processing fee is charged to creators.
• Winners receive prize disbursements through Stripe-connected payout accounts, and the Service deducts the actual Stripe processing fee plus a 5% platform fee from the winner's gross prize amount before transfer.
• Winner payout processing starts after the creator selects the winning submission and then settles through Stripe Connect.
• Processor fees, bank fees, foreign exchange fees, taxes, withholding, reserve deductions, or compliance holds may reduce or delay settlement.
• We may refuse, suspend, reverse, or delay any transaction if required by fraud review, sanctions screening, identity verification, card-network rules, court order, tax obligations, or Stripe requirements.

6. No Refunds, No Cancellations, No Extensions

Payment for a competition is final. Creators are not charged for merely editing a draft; payment is requested only during publish. Once a creator completes checkout and the competition opens, there are no creator-requested refunds, cancellations, or deadline extensions under any circumstance. Before paying, the creator is solely responsible for confirming that the requirements, prize amount, timeline, and submission rules are correct. If a creator-initiated action is required after publish, the creator must complete it within the posted timeline; the Service will not reopen, extend, or refund an opened competition.

• Completed publish payments are final. The Service does not refund or reverse an opened competition at creator request.
• A competition that has been published cannot be cancelled by the creator. Creators who do not want a competition to proceed must not complete publish payment.
• Submission deadlines and winner-selection windows cannot be extended after publication.
• If the creator does not select a winner before the winner-selection window ends, the competition closes without a winner and the entire prize pool is retained by the Service as revenue. No portion is refunded to the creator.
• If publish payment is canceled, fails, or expires before successful confirmation, no completed competition payment exists; the competition stays in draft and the creator can attempt publish again without penalty.
• Processor fees, network disputes, chargebacks, reversals, and regulatory holds are outside the Service's control and may delay or withhold settlement regardless of the above.
• Where the Service incurs costs, losses, fees, penalties, or reserves caused by your transaction activity, you remain responsible for those amounts to the fullest extent permitted by law.

7. Winner Selection and Creator Discretion

Creators are responsible for reviewing submissions and selecting winners in good faith, in compliance with their posted requirements and applicable law. The Service allows a creator to select a single winner. Unless mandatory law requires otherwise, artistic, technical, and commercial judgment is inherently subjective.

The creator's winner-selection decision is final. The Service does not provide a dispute process inside the product. If you believe there is a verified Service malfunction, proven fraud, payment failure, or legal compliance issue, contact us directly using the addresses listed in our Legal contact section. We may review such matters at our sole discretion. We do not promise reversal after a payout has been processed.

The Service uses a fixed winner-selection window of 7 days after the submission deadline. That window is not extendable. After a creator selects a winner, the selection is final and payout processing begins. If the creator does not select a winner before the window ends, the competition closes without a winner and the entire prize pool is retained by the Service as revenue, with no refund to the creator.

8. Intellectual Property, Licenses, and Rights Clearance

You retain ownership of content, code, media, trade names, trademarks, and other rights that you already lawfully owned before uploading them, except to the extent you transfer or license rights under these Terms or a separate written agreement.

Operator license

By posting, transmitting, or storing content through the Service, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to make available, copy, store, transmit, adapt for technical formatting, display, moderate, review, secure, back up, investigate, enforce, and otherwise use that content as needed to operate, improve, protect, and comply with law in relation to the Service.

Evaluation license for creators

By submitting a submission, you grant the competition creator a non-exclusive, limited, worldwide license to access, download where the product allows, review, test, and evaluate the submission for the specific competition, together with any rights reasonably necessary to compare submissions, verify functionality, and resolve disputes.

Winning rights transfer

Unless the competition page or a separate written agreement states otherwise, once the applicable winning payout has been successfully paid to, and received by, the winner and has not been reversed for compliance or fraud reasons, the winner agrees to assign to the creator all transferable right, title, and interest the winner owns in the winning submission as delivered for that competition. Where any right cannot legally be assigned, the winner instead grants the creator an exclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, transferable, sublicensable license to use, modify, distribute, display, perform, exploit, and commercialize the winning submission to the maximum extent permitted by law.

You must not include open-source, third-party, stock, licensed, confidential, export-controlled, or personally identifiable material in a submission unless you have the right to do so and you clearly disclose any usage conditions, attribution obligations, pass-through license terms, or restrictions that survive transfer.

9. User Conduct and Restricted Activities

You may not use the Service to do, facilitate, or attempt any of the following:

• violate law, court order, regulation, sanctions program, export control, or card-network rule;
• run a lottery, sweepstakes, raffle, gambling, random-draw, or chance-based promotion through a competition flow;
• upload malware, ransomware, spyware, exploits, destructive scripts, hidden trackers, credential theft tools, or other harmful code;
• infringe copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, privacy, publicity, moral, or contractual rights;
• post unlawful, defamatory, abusive, hateful, violent, sexually exploitative, or fraudulent content;
• scrape, crawl, mirror, decompile, reverse engineer, or bypass access controls except where law cannot be excluded;
• circumvent fees, persuade users to complete the same competition off-platform, or evade payout, moderation, support, or identity checks;
• use bots or multiple accounts to manipulate account counts, views, ratings, or selection outcomes;
• use the Service for weapons, terrorism, child sexual abuse material, sanctions evasion, money laundering, or other prohibited high-risk activity;
• collect personal data from other users except as strictly necessary for the specific competition and only in compliance with law.

10. Moderation, Investigations, and Cooperation with Authorities

We may investigate conduct, review content, preserve logs and files, freeze actions, remove content, decline publication, reject submissions, restrict downloads, suspend payouts, ban accounts, or refer matters to Stripe, service providers, counsel, or law enforcement where we reasonably believe a violation, fraud, abuse, or legal risk may exist. We are not required to give advance notice where doing so could create harm or legal exposure.

Support inquiries do not create a duty to act in any particular way or on any particular timetable. We may keep evidence and audit records even after a matter appears resolved.

11. Electronic Communications and Notices

You consent to receive legally significant notices, service messages, payment notices, compliance requests, and other communications electronically, including by email, in-product notification, or publication on the Service. It is your responsibility to keep your email address current and to monitor the inboxes associated with your account.

12. Suspension, Termination, and Record Retention

We may suspend or terminate all or part of your access immediately if we believe you present legal, security, abuse, payment, reputational, or operational risk, or if we are asked to do so by Stripe, a regulator, a court, a rights holder, or another competent authority. You remain responsible for obligations incurred before termination.

Termination does not require us to erase every record immediately. We may retain content, logs, payout records, identity data, and communications for backup, tax, accounting, security, audit, dispute, sanctions, legal hold, or enforcement purposes as described in our Privacy Policy and as required by law.

13. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, QUIET ENJOYMENT, AVAILABILITY, SECURITY, OR RESULTS.

We do not warrant that the Service, file storage, messaging, payment integrations, competition outcomes, or notifications will be uninterrupted, complete, timely, secure, or error-free, or that all harmful content will be detected or blocked.

14. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE OPERATOR WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, CONSEQUENTIAL, MULTIPLE, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, GOODWILL, REPUTATION, DATA, USE, BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY, OR EXPECTED SAVINGS, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF THOSE DAMAGES.

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE TOTAL AMOUNTS PAID BY YOU THROUGH OR TO THE SERVICE (INCLUDING PLATFORM FEES, PRIZE FUNDING, OR OTHER CHARGES PROCESSED THROUGH THE SERVICE) DURING THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM OR (B) USD $100.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including liability for our own fraud, intentional misconduct, or gross negligence where such exclusion is prohibited.

15. Indemnification

You will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Operator and the Operator's agents, service providers, successors, and assigns from and against any claim, demand, action, investigation, loss, liability, judgment, penalty, fine, tax, interest, cost, or expense (including reasonable legal and professional fees) arising out of or related to your content, competitions, submissions, payment activity, connected-account activity, messages, data handling, violation of these Terms, or violation of law or third-party rights.

16. Governing Law, Venue, and Mandatory Rights

These Terms and any non-contractual disputes related to them are governed by the laws of Japan, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. The Tokyo District Court or Tokyo Summary Court, as applicable, will have exclusive jurisdiction in the first instance, unless mandatory consumer-protection law in your home jurisdiction requires a different forum or additional rights that cannot lawfully be waived.

The English-language version of these documents controls unless a mandatory local law requires a different interpretation.

17. Changes to the Service or These Terms

We may revise these Terms from time to time. Material changes may be communicated by posting an updated version on the Service, by email, or through in-product notice. The updated Terms take effect on the stated revision date unless a different effective date is required by law. Your continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

18. Contact

• Legal and terms inquiries: legal@a2gig.com
• Privacy requests: privacy@a2gig.com
• Billing and payment inquiries: billing@a2gig.com
• Operator: 前田翔