Disclaimer

Room 404 (room404.gamestrategists.com)

Which copy this page speaks for

This subdomain holds one thing: the browser copy of Room 404. It is a one-person project by alphaBETA DEV (GameStrategists) — not a company, and not a storefront.

Two other things about the same game are outside this page. The profile and the walkthroughs on the main site, gamestrategists.com, carry their own statements; the Windows package on the Microsoft Store runs offline and follows the store’s own process. Where the three disagree, take the copy actually in front of you.

The scale of the work — how many acts, puzzles, clues and endings — is stated in the first line of the terms on this same subdomain. This page deliberately does not copy it: every extra copy of a number is one more thing that can go stale.

This story is invented

Room 404 is an original realistic horror-mystery ARG by GameStrategists. The building (Qingcheng Garden, block 4, room 404), the people (Lin Xia, Lin Yuan and the tenants), the institutions (the sub-district office and government portal, the daily newspaper, the forum, the rental site, the radio station, the company that made the server), the dates, the files and the recordings are all artistic invention. Any resemblance to anything real is coincidental.

The “websites” you visit inside the game live in the address bar of a simulated browser. They are not real sites and they do not lead to real sites. Their layouts imitate real institutions so that you have to make choices in an interface that looks ordinary; that imitation represents no real organisation, person or event.

Trademarks, and what “no affiliation” means here

Third-party names or marks mentioned anywhere on this site are used for identification only; all rights belong to their owners, and no such mention implies affiliation, partnership, sponsorship or endorsement. This personal project has no such relationship with those rights holders, nor with any real organisation imitated inside the game.

Which screen carries the content notice

The screen you pass through before the game states it plainly: the work carries horror, dread and psychological pressure, may include sudden sounds, flickering images and hard cuts, and explicitly tells people sensitive to flicker not to enter. Below that line there is a fuller “content warning” section — it is collapsed by default, so you have to open it to read the whole thing.

The game is not aimed at children under thirteen; the children section of the privacy policy is the same statement. Beyond that, no rating board has put an age mark on this web copy, and this page will not invent one. The Microsoft Store copy takes its rating from the store’s own questionnaire, and the store’s page is the place to read it.

How many links here actually leave the site

This page contains no link that carries you off-site at all — every link you can click on it stays within this subdomain (the front page and the four other information pages). That is written to match the file: counting <a href> attributes, the number pointing at an off-site http(s) address is zero.

• The game’s front page has one outbound link: the badge that opens this game’s Microsoft Store page. Two independent browser readings agree — six <a href> attributes before entering and six after, one of them off-site.
• Links inside the invented websites you browse in the game all point at #; clicking one never takes you out of the game.
• The privacy policy page carries three more, pointing at Google’s ad settings, the industry opt-out notice and Cloudflare’s privacy policy — policy documents, not content exits.

Counting the <a href> attributes across all eight files this subdomain builds (the two front pages, the four information pages and the unknown-path page): in the statically written files the only off-site addresses are the three policy documents on the privacy page (each listed once in each language half), while the other seven files have none; mounting the front page in a real browser adds the store badge. If you reach a real third-party website by some other route, this site is not responsible for its content or its privacy practices, and does not endorse it.

What is actually true about advertising

This subdomain loads the Google AdSense script, and every subdomain on this site publishes an ads.txt that states who is authorised to sell advertising here. Whether an ad is bought, by whom, and at what price happens on Google’s side; this site neither sees nor picks the creatives.

This page carries no ad slot of ours, and it claims no income figures — revenue is a number that moves, and a number pinned to a legal page is the easiest thing on it to turn into a falsehood. How the running costs (domain and hosting) are accounted for against advertising is written in the terms on this same subdomain. How ads decide who to show to, and how to switch personalised advertising off, are set out in the privacy policy — that is the document in charge of it.

Offered “as is”, and your save

This site is provided “as is”. To the maximum extent allowed by law we accept no liability for any direct or indirect loss arising from playing, or being unable to play, this game; content here is for entertainment and reference, not professional advice.

Your progress exists only in your own browser’s local storage. Clearing site data, switching to a private window or using another device destroys it, and nothing anywhere can restore it for you. The privacy policy lists the exact keys and the three ways to erase them.

How this page changes, and how to reach me

There is one way this page changes: the text is corrected, and the date above moves with it. That date is read from the last recorded change to the body of this page, not typed in by hand. This page deliberately avoids “we reserve the right to change this at any time” — that sentence carries no information, and every real change here leaves a record.

Questions about this statement: contact@gamestrategists.com. Anything about personal data goes to privacy@gamestrategists.com and is governed by the privacy policy. Reply times are stated on the contact page; this page does not copy that figure, so the two cannot drift apart.