Here is a scenario every studio eventually meets: a client pays, downloads the finals, and two months later files a chargeback. In most setups, nothing happens to the files — the payment reversed, the delivery didn't notice, and you're now disputing a charge for work the client still has open access to.
The root cause is that payment state and gallery state live in different systems, and nobody's job is keeping them consistent. That's not a discipline problem; it's an architecture problem.
In Arteliox the two are one record, so the fix is automatic. When a refund is issued or a dispute lands, the linked gallery re-locks on its own — no checklist, no remembering. Because downloads are served through signed URLs that expire within about a minute, there is no long-lived link left over from before the re-lock; the residual access window is capped by design.
And the whole sequence — payment, unlock, refund, re-lock — is written to the append-only audit trail as it happens. If the dispute goes to evidence, you have a timeline, not a memory.
Refunds are a normal part of running a studio. The platform's job is to make sure they're boring.