Terms of Service

Mezzotale is run by Nana Kojo Atta-Benyah, an individual in Ghana (“Mezzotale”, “we”, “us”). Mezzotale is a website where readers play interactive, branching stories and authors publish them, together with Mezzotale Studio, the desktop app authors write them in.

You can reach us at contact@mezzotale.com. The contact page has our postal address and what to include for each kind of question.

• You must be at least 13 to create an account. If you’re under 18, you need a parent or guardian’s permission, and they agree to these terms for you.
• Give true details, and keep your sign-in to yourself. One account per person; accounts can’t be sold or handed over.
• Your profile (name, handle, picture and bio) is public. Don’t use a name or picture that pretends to be someone else.
• Tell us at once at contact@mezzotale.com if you think someone else has used your account.

Every story can be read free, up to a daily number of new scenes of each story (currently 10). The count starts again at midnight UTC, by our server’s clock. Going back to a scene you’ve already read doesn’t count.

To read on sooner, you can spend Gleams to skip the wait, or subscribe to VIP, which removes the daily limit while it lasts. Some stories may be premium: their author sets a price in Gleams to unlock them, after which the daily limit no longer applies to that story for you.

Your place in each story is saved to your account. If an author publishes a new version while you’re reading, you finish the version you started. If a story is taken down, it stops being available, including to readers partway through it.

What you keep

You own the stories, pictures, music and other material you publish (“your content”). We don’t claim ownership of it.

What you allow us

So that we can run Mezzotale, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, copy, display, play and distribute your content on Mezzotale; to make the formats, previews, covers, link pictures and excerpts that showing and sharing it needs; and to feature it when promoting Mezzotale, on our site and our social media and video channels. The licence lasts while your content is published, and for the short time it then takes to clear it from our systems and backups. It doesn’t cover copies readers have already shared outside Mezzotale.

What you promise

• You wrote or made your content, or you have every right needed to publish it here, including for any pictures, music and sound in it.
• It follows the Community Guidelines and the law.
• If AI wrote a large share of a story, you leave the “AI-assisted” mark the Studio adds in place, and you don’t present AI-made content as something it isn’t.

Publishing creates a fixed version of your story. You can publish new versions or take the story down at any time. Mezzotale doesn’t pay authors for now; a royalty programme may come later, under its own terms.

Besides following the Community Guidelines, you agree not to:

• get around the daily limit, premium prices or any other limit, including by changing saved reading places, replaying requests or making extra accounts;
• copy stories off Mezzotale in bulk, or collect other people’s information, with scripts or bots;
• disrupt, overload, probe or break into Mezzotale or anyone’s account;
• inflate likes, reads, follows or comments with fake accounts or automation;
• use Mezzotale to break the law or anyone else’s rights.

• Gleams are Mezzotale’s in-app currency. Buying them gives you a licence to use them on Mezzotale, to skip the daily wait or unlock premium stories. They aren’t money or property: they have no cash value, can’t be exchanged for money, and can’t be sold, given or moved to another account.
• Gleams you buy don’t expire while your account is open. VIP’s monthly bonus Gleams are yours on the same terms.
• Spending Gleams is final: a skipped wait or an unlocked story can’t be turned back into Gleams.
• If a payment for Gleams is refunded or charged back, those Gleams are taken back from your balance. If you’ve already spent them, your balance can go below zero: what you unlocked stays unlocked, but you can’t spend Gleams again until a later purchase brings the balance back above zero.
• We may change the prices and sizes of Gleams packs for future purchases.

VIP removes the daily reading limit on every story while it’s active, and comes with a monthly Gleams bonus and a VIP mark on your profile and comments. VIP doesn’t unlock premium stories. Studio Pro gives authors more file storage and the Studio’s Pro features, as described in the Studio.

• Subscriptions renew automatically each month, at the price shown when you subscribed, until you cancel.
• You can cancel at any time from your account. You keep the subscription until the end of the month you’ve paid for; it then ends, with no partial refund.
• If we change a subscription’s price, we tell you at least 30 days before your next renewal at the new price, so you can cancel first.
• If a renewal can’t be paid, the subscription ends.

Payments are handled by Whop, our payment provider; its terms also apply to the payment itself, and it never shares your card details with us. Prices are shown with tax included. For buyers in the UK, the EU and some US states, Whop collects and pays the sales tax or VAT.

All sales are final, for Gleams and for subscriptions, except where a purchase wasn’t delivered or you were charged twice; then we fix it or refund you. The Refund Policy has the details and says how to ask.

If you’re in the UK or the EU, you normally have 14 days to cancel a purchase of digital content. Before you pay, we ask you to agree that your Gleams or subscription start straight away and that you then lose that right to cancel. We only supply them once you’ve agreed.

If you dispute a payment with your bank (a chargeback), we take back what it paid for, and your account can’t buy or spend Gleams while the dispute is open. After two chargebacks, an account can no longer make purchases. Please write to us first: we’d rather sort it out with you.

Mezzotale Studio is free to download and use, with Studio Pro as an optional subscription. We give you a personal, non-transferable licence to install and use it to write stories, and it updates itself to new versions. You may not copy, sell or reverse-engineer it except where the law allows.

The Studio saves your stories on your computer, and in your account when you’re signed in. We work hard to keep them safe, but computers and connections fail: keep your own copies of work you can’t afford to lose.

Mezzotale, Mezzotale Studio, our logo, the site’s design and artwork, and our software belong to us, apart from open-source parts used under their own licences. These terms don’t give you any right to use them, beyond using Mezzotale as intended.

If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.

We may review content and accounts, and remove content or restrict, suspend or close accounts that break these terms, the Community Guidelines or the law. Usually that’s step by step: a warning, then taking content down, then a suspension, then closing the account. Serious harm, such as anything sexualising children, goes straight to the end of that ladder and is reported to the authorities.

When we act, we tell you what we did and why. If you think we got it wrong, reply to that message or write to contact@mezzotale.com and a person will look again. If the appeal succeeds, we undo what we did.

You can stop using Mezzotale and ask us to delete your account at any time (write to contact@mezzotale.com until the account page offers it). Deleting your account takes down your published stories, and ends any subscription. Gleams left in the account and the remainder of a subscription are not refunded.

We may close an account under the moderation section above, or if Mezzotale itself closes; if Mezzotale ever shuts down, we’ll give at least 30 days’ notice and a way to download your stories.

Mezzotale is provided as it is and as available. We don’t promise it will always be online, free of errors, or that any story will stay available. Stories are written by their authors, and their views aren’t ours.

As far as the law allows, we’re not responsible for indirect or unforeseeable losses, or for lost profits, data or opportunities; and our total responsibility to you for any claim is limited to the larger of what you paid us in the 12 months before it, or US$50.

Nothing in these terms limits responsibility the law doesn’t allow us to limit (such as for fraud, or for death or injury caused by negligence), or takes away the rights you have as a consumer under the law where you live.

If you believe something on Mezzotale infringes your copyright, write to contact@mezzotale.com with: the work you own, the address of the page on Mezzotale, how to reach you, and a statement that you believe in good faith the use isn’t authorised and that what you say is accurate and you’re the owner or allowed to act for them. We’ll remove the material if the complaint holds, and tell its author, who can respond. Accounts that repeatedly infringe are closed.

We may update these terms as Mezzotale grows. For changes that matter, we tell you by email or on the site at least 14 days before they take effect. If you keep using Mezzotale after that, the new terms apply; if you don’t agree, you can close your account. The date at the top shows the version in force.

These terms are governed by the laws of Ghana, and disputes go to its courts. If you’re a consumer living elsewhere, you also keep the protection of the mandatory laws of your country, and you can bring a claim in your local courts. If any part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.

Questions? Write to contact@mezzotale.com.