If your client is a company in California, they cannot hold your money back until you do one more pass.
That has been the law since 1 January 2025. I have not seen one 3D artist mention it since.
Here is the odd part. My own studio is not covered. You probably are.
The law and its name
SB 988 is called the Freelance Worker Protection Act. The Governor signed it on 28 September 2024.
It covers contracts entered into or renewed on or after 1 January 2025. It sits in the Business and Professions Code, sections 18100 to 18107.
Why it does not cover me
The act defines a freelance worker as a person or organisation composed of no more than one person. Incorporated or not, trade name or not.
There are four of us in Budapest. So a Californian client hiring us through outsourcing gets none of this.
Most people reading this work alone. You are who the law was written for.
The threshold is 250 dollars, and small jobs stack
The work has to be worth 250 dollars or more. That is not measured per job.
It counts one contract alone, or every contract between you and that same client in the previous 120 days, added up.
Three 90-dollar fixes for one studio inside four months cross the line.
The clause nobody quotes
Section 18102(b) is the important one. Once you have started work, the client cannot make timely payment conditional on two things.
The first is accepting less money than the contract says. The second, in the statute's own words: "provide more goods or services or grant more intellectual property rights than agreed to in the contract."
That is scope creep, named and banned. "One more revision and I release the invoice" is now unlawful in California.
What the contract has to say
Section 18103 requires writing. The client keeps a signed copy for at least four years.
Four things must be in it:
- The name and mailing address of each party.
- An itemised list of your services, with the value of each, and the rate and method of payment.
- The date you are paid, or the mechanism that sets the date.
- The date by which you must send your list of services rendered.
If no payment date is named, the default is 30 days after you finish the work.
I checked my own page and it failed
I read my own outsourcing page against those four items. It names one of them, and only half of that one.
It promises fixed per-asset pricing, agreed before work starts. It names no payment date, no payment method and no invoice deadline.
Then there is a line I wrote myself. Revisions are included until the asset passes your review.
That is an unlimited revision promise on my own sales page. It cannot be used against me, because four people are not a freelance worker.
It would be used against you. The law stops a client demanding more than the contract agreed. If your contract agrees to unlimited passes, there is no more.
The word that might shut you out
Professional services is not defined in this act. It borrows the list in Labor Code 2778(b)(2).
That list names graphic design, fine artist, illustrator, still photographer and videographer. It does not name 3D artist, modeller or texture artist.
I do not know which line a game-ready prop sits on. I found no case that has tested it.
What it costs a client to ignore
Refusing a written contract after you asked: 1,000 dollars. Paying late: up to twice the amount unpaid when it was due.
Any other breach: the value of the contract, or of the work done, whichever is greater. Legal fees and costs come on top.
Section 18104 is one sentence long. A waiver of any provision is contrary to public policy, void and unenforceable.
New York got there first
New York's Freelance Isn't Free Act went statewide on 28 August 2024. The threshold is 800 dollars, also added up over 120 days, also 30 days to pay.
What I still cannot tell you
The act never says where the worker has to be. It only says the hiring party is in California.
Read plainly, a Budapest artist hired by a Californian company is covered. No court has tested that, and I found nobody willing to say it on the record.
Waivers are void. A contract that picks another state's law is a separate question, and the act does not answer it.
Three lines to add before the next job
Write the scope down, and write the number of revision rounds. That number is what turns a complaint into a claim.
Put a real date on payment, not "on approval". Then say what the client is buying, the way my licensing page does it for files.
This bites hardest on a first paid job. I have written about the portfolio mistakes that cost that job. This is the part that comes after.