Joining Art of FACELESS — What It Actually Means

A plain-language summary for authors, game devs, musicians, filmmakers, and transmedia artists thinking about joining the collective. This is not the contract — it's the human version of it. The full agreement (Contributor Agreement, working draft) governs if the two ever disagree.

What AOF is

Art of FACELESS is a decentralised creative collective — not a studio, not a label chasing a cut of your work. We give you a shared home: publishing support, infrastructure, and a community of other creators, without asking you to sign your work away. Facelessness is Freedom. Nothing About Us Without Us.

You keep your work

Your copyright, your IP, your ownership — 100% yours, always. Joining AOF never transfers ownership of anything you make to us. What you give us is a license to publish and promote it — nothing more.

We take nothing until you're actually earning

• The first £2,500 your Work earns (after platform fees, tax, and print costs) is entirely yours.
• Only after that, AOF takes 10% of what comes in — you keep the other 90%.
• Example: your Work makes £8,000. You keep £2,500 automatically, then 90% of the remaining £5,500 (£4,950) — £7,450 total to you, £550 to AOF.

That 10% isn't profit for us — it funds hosting, admin, and support for other creators in the collective.

If you land something bigger

Film option, publishing deal, label signing — if a real outside deal comes along while you're with AOF (or within 2 years after you leave, if it's clearly connected to a Work we published), AOF takes a 5% success fee on the guaranteed money you receive. We don't get veto power over the deal, and we're not gatekeepers — if you want help vetting or negotiating it, we're there, but it's your call either way.

How long this lasts

3 years. No sneaky auto-renewal — it just ends unless we both actively choose to sign again. When it ends (or if you leave early), full rights to your Work snap back to you automatically. No paperwork chase required.

Leaving early

You can walk away anytime with 90 days' notice, no penalty. AOF can't drop you on a whim — we can only end things early for a genuine breach (fraud, non-payment, that kind of thing), or if we both agree to part ways.

What AOF actually does with the money

Covers site hosting and admin, keeps the collective running, and funds support (promotion, small grants, mentorship) for other AOF creators. Not personal profit for anyone.

What to write on the storefront listing

When you list the Work on Amazon, Steam, itch.io, Bandcamp, or anywhere else, use one of these — pick whichever fits the platform's fields, and always keep the link:

A few pointers:

• Always link the domain, not just the name — that's what actually sends readers/players/listeners back to the collective.
• Keep your own name as author/creator front and centre. AOF is the publisher/imprint credit, not a co-author credit.
• This wording is a courtesy both ways: it tells your audience where the work lives, and it's the one piece of "AOF branding" the contract (Section 3.5) actually asks you to include while the license is active. You're welcome to keep using "Published by" / "Originally published by" language for archival and portfolio purposes even after the Work reverts to you in full — no permission needed.

The honest caveats

• This summary simplifies things — the full Contributor Agreement has the exact numbers and edge cases.
• Neither document has been reviewed by a solicitor yet. We're building this in the open, plainly, before spending money on lawyers. If anything here changes once we do get legal review, we'll tell every contributor before it applies to them.
• AOF will operate as a Ltd company, so it can hold licenses and protect the collective's IP — but that's a legal shell for doing business honestly, not a rights-grab.

Questions? Ask before you sign anything. That's the whole point of doing this in plain language.