Organizations & context switching

One idea makes the rest of the platform make sense: you are not your organization.

Your account signs in. An organization acts. Every game, application, message and review belongs to an organization rather than to you personally — which is why the first screen after you log in is a chooser and not a dashboard.

Why it works this way

• Teams outlive people. Hanging games, partners and reviews off the organization means a studio's history survives whoever set the account up.
• Both sides are the same kind of thing. A studio invites an organization; a creator applies as one. Reviews, chats and match scores all sit between two organizations — a solo developer is simply an organization of one.
• Switching has to be cheap. If doing both jobs took two accounts, everyone doing both would keep two logins and miss half their notifications.

The two types

The choice is permanent. It decides every screen you see afterwards, and an organization can't be converted to the other type later. One account can own several organizations of either type, so if you end up needing both, you make a second one.

Personal mode

Signed in with no organization selected, you're in personal mode. It's the only place you can pick which organization to act as, create a new one, or join someone else's team with an invite code. Deep inside a studio and decide you want a creator profile too? Come back here first.

Creating one

From personal mode, start the wizard — one question per screen, Back / Skip / Next along the bottom, eleven steps for a creator and eight for a studio, most of them skippable. Three are worth slowing down for:

1. "What are you registering?" — the permanent choice above.
2. The contact step — "Verify your contact email to continue." Next stays disabled until you enter the code that lands in your inbox. Check spam before assuming it didn't send.
3. "Got a referral code?" — the final screen, and your only chance to enter one. Codes can't be added afterwards and stop working thirty days after you create your account. It's free Pro time for both of you, so dig the code out before you finish.

The last button is Create Profile for a creator, Add Studio for a studio.

Switching context

Top right of the app bar is the context switcher, tinted the colour of whoever you currently are:

Open it for SWITCH CONTEXT: your personal row at the top, then every organization you own or belong to, with its type and plan. Click one and the whole page changes — different navigation, different dashboard, different buttons. You didn't sign out and back in; you changed hats.

Switching is instant and safe, but nothing you've typed into a form survives it, so finish what you're doing first.

Your organization page

My Organization holds everything about one organization: Team (invite codes and permissions), Edit Organization, Billing, and Danger Zone — plus Tags for studios, and Match Profile and Platforms for creators. Public Profile, linked at the top, is the same organization as everyone else sees it: rating, reviews, and your games or your portfolio.

Who can do what

Members get fine-grained switches on the Team tab, and the grid only shows the ones that make sense for the type:

• Studio — six: Games · Events · Partners (approve, reject, remove, review, ban) · Rewards (reward requests and all Steam keys) · Announce · Messages.
• Creator — three: Partners (apply, accept, decline, leave, review) · Submit (deliverables and review requests) · Messages.
• Owner only, with no switch at all: inviting and removing members, billing, and editing the creator profile. There is no "can invite members" permission to hand out.

When you can't find a button

Nearly always one of two things:

1. You're in the wrong context. Check the colour top right — a studio action simply doesn't exist while you're acting as a creator or in personal mode.
2. You're on someone's team without that permission. Check your own row on Team.

If a control was there yesterday and isn't now, check whether the game or event is locked or archived: a read-only state keeps the tabs visible and just stops the writes.

Next: How discovery & matching works