Terms of Service

1. Who We Are and What This Agreement Covers

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are a legal agreement between you ("you," "your," or "Customer") and GameGrid ("GameGrid," "we," "us," or "our"), operating the website and platform at wdcgamegrid.com (the "Platform"). GameGrid provides game-server hosting and related services, including server provisioning, configuration, backup/restore, file management, mod installation, and customer support (collectively, the "Service").

By creating an account, placing an order, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms and by our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. See Section 18 (Dispute Resolution) below.

2. Eligibility and Account Registration

2.1. You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of legal majority in your jurisdiction, to create an account and enter a paid order. A parent or legal guardian may create and manage an account on behalf of a minor where permitted by applicable law and the relevant game's own terms.

2.2. To register, you must provide a valid email address, username, and password. You must keep this information accurate and current. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. Authentication is managed through our identity provider, Keycloak, which stores your credentials securely.

2.3. You must affirmatively accept the current version of these Terms and our Privacy Policy at registration before your account is created. If we make a material change to either document, you will be notified and required to accept the updated version before continuing to use paid services.

2.4. You represent and warrant that all information you give us during registration and while using the Service is accurate, complete, and current. You agree to tell us promptly about any changes to your registration information, and to confirm that information within seven (7) days if we ask you to. If you give us false or incomplete information, we may suspend or close your account, and you may be responsible for any damages that result.

2.5. We may decline to open an account, or may suspend or terminate an existing account, where required by applicable law, including economic sanctions and export-control restrictions, or where we reasonably believe the account is being used fraudulently or in violation of these Terms.

3. Orders, Server Bundles, and Provisioning

3.1. The Service is offered on a subscription basis with monthly billing. The specific scope, pricing, region, and duration of a given order are described at the time of purchase. Current plans and pricing are displayed on our games page. The presentation of services on the Platform does not constitute a binding offer until we confirm your order.

3.2. A purchase may take the form of an individual server order, or a Server Bundle — a single purchased allocation with a fixed number of server "slots" into which you may add, remove, or replace individual game-server instances without a new checkout for each one, up to the purchased slot count and for the duration of the bundle's paid period.

3.3. Placing an order is an offer to purchase the Service on these Terms. A contract is formed when we confirm your order (electronically, to the email address on your account) or when we begin providing the Service to you and you use it, whichever happens first.

3.4. You may choose a server location/region from those we offer. We may move the underlying infrastructure that delivers your Service to another facility within the same region, as long as the agreed scope and quality of the Service are not reduced. We may also update or change our services to keep up with technology or legal requirements, provided the agreed scope and quality are not diminished.

3.5. Restricted territories. We do not offer the Service to persons or organizations domiciled in, or ordinarily residing in, any jurisdiction that is the target of comprehensive U.S. government sanctions. At the time of writing, this includes North Korea, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Russia, and the occupied regions of eastern Ukraine and Crimea; the list may change as U.S. foreign-policy and sanctions programs evolve, and we will post updates with reasonable notice to affected customers. You represent and warrant that you will not access or use the Service, directly or indirectly, from within such a jurisdiction, and that you will not redistribute or resell the Service to any person or organization located in such a jurisdiction. Breach of this representation is grounds for immediate termination under Section 11 and may expose you to claims for damages.

3.6. Sanctions screening. As part of our compliance program, we screen the registration information you provide against U.S. government sanctions lists (including OFAC's Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List and the Commerce Department's Entity List). If we are unable to confirm that you are not a listed person or a person operating on behalf of a listed person, we will not open or continue your account. You agree to keep your registration information accurate and current so that this screening remains reliable, and you authorize us to re-run this screening periodically throughout our relationship.

3.7. Maintenance. We perform regular maintenance to keep the Service safe and reliable. We may temporarily take the Service offline or limit it when there is a good reason to do so, and we will try to schedule routine maintenance during off-peak hours. We will give you reasonable advance notice of scheduled maintenance whenever we can. You can check the current status of the Service on our Status page.

4. Payment, Credit, and Pricing

4.1. All fees are as displayed at checkout or in your account. Prices are in USD. If your billing country is in the European Union or the United Kingdom, the prices shown include VAT. Elsewhere, prices are exclusive of sales tax: any applicable sales tax is calculated by our payment processor from the billing country and postal code you provide, and added at checkout. The tax amount and the total are shown before you confirm payment. Payments are processed by our third-party payment processor, Stripe; GameGrid does not directly store your full payment card number. Subscriptions are billed monthly in advance and automatically renew on your billing date until canceled.

4.2. Account credit. Your account may carry a credit balance, which can be increased by a refund issued as credit instead of a card refund, a referral reward (Section 6), a commission under our content creator program, or credit we add to your account. Available credit is applied first, against the total including any tax, and only the remainder is charged to your payment method: at each automatic renewal of a monthly subscription, and, unless you choose to pay by card only, when you renew a plan or add server slots to it from your account. When credit covers the whole amount of a renewal or of added server slots, nothing is charged to your payment method, and a plan that does not renew automatically can be renewed, or given more slots, from credit alone, without a payment method on file. When you renew a plan or add server slots from your account and the remainder would be less than our payment processor's minimum card charge, less credit is used so that the card is charged that minimum. When you place a new order, you may choose to apply available credit. It pays first, against the order's total including any tax, and only the remainder is charged to your payment method: tax is calculated on the order's full price, after any discount code, and is not reduced by credit. When credit covers the whole total of a new order, nothing is charged to your payment method. When the remainder of an order for a plan that does not renew automatically would be less than our payment processor's minimum card charge, less credit is used so that the card is charged that minimum.

4.3. Credit is non-withdrawable. Credit on your account cannot be refunded to or withdrawn to an external account such as a credit card, bank account, or payment processor. Credit can only be used toward GameGrid services.

4.4. Price changes. We may change our prices to reflect changes in our costs (including data center, hardware, personnel, energy, and administrative costs), market conditions, or changes in applicable taxes. We will give you at least 30 days' notice before a price increase takes effect. If we raise your price by more than 10% over what you were paying at the time of the increase, you may cancel your subscription within 30 days of receiving the notice, and the cancellation will take effect at the end of your current billing period. If you do not cancel within that window, the new price will apply going forward. Price changes do not affect any billing period you have already paid for.

4.5. Negative balance. If more is taken from your credit balance than it holds, for example a referral reward clawed back under Section 6.2 after you have spent it, or a disputed payment under Section 4.8, your balance falls below zero. A negative balance is an amount you owe us, and it is offset against credit later added to your account.

4.6. Failed payments. If a scheduled payment fails, your subscription may enter a grace period before your server is suspended. A suspended server's data is not immediately deleted; it is retained for a limited period (Section 9) before being permanently removed if the account is not brought current or affirmatively canceled.

4.7. Cancellation. You may cancel your subscription at any time through the Billing Dashboard in your account, or by emailing billing@wdcgamegrid.com. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period — you will retain access to your servers until then but will not be charged again. You can re-subscribe at any time.

4.8. Disputes and chargebacks. If you dispute or charge back a payment you made to us through your bank or card issuer, the disputed amount is deducted from your account credit balance when the dispute is opened. If your balance is smaller than that amount, the difference becomes a negative balance under Section 4.5. If the dispute is closed in our favour, or is closed without the funds being taken from us, the deducted amount is returned to your credit balance in full. If the dispute is decided in your favour, the deduction stays.

5. Money-Back Guarantee and Refunds

5.1. 72-hour renewal guarantee. We provide a 72-hour money-back guarantee on automatic subscription renewals, beginning from the time the renewal payment is processed. If you contact us within 72 hours of a renewal to request a refund, we will refund the renewal charge to your original payment method. This guarantee does not apply to initial purchases (see 5.2) or to charges for services already used beyond the renewal period.

5.2. 7-day service-fault guarantee. We provide a full 7-day money-back guarantee if the Service is found to be at fault — that is, if your game server is non-functional due to a platform issue on our end (not due to misconfiguration, mod conflicts, or third-party software issues). This guarantee does not cover servers running "Early Access" or beta-stage third-party game server software, as instability is inherent to such software.

5.3. Tiered refund approval. Refund requests that fall outside the guarantees above are reviewed and, where appropriate, approved according to an internal tiered-approval process based on the requested amount: amounts over $200 require a higher level of approval authority, and amounts over $2,000 require approval from platform ownership. At present, every such request is reviewed and decided by platform ownership. Every refund request, whether approved or denied, is logged with the amount, reason, and approving party. A refund may be issued to your original payment method or as account credit, at our discretion or at your request where feasible.

5.4. Non-refundable payments. Certain payment methods may be non-refundable for legal or functional reasons. Where applicable, this will be disclosed at the time of purchase. Refunds that would violate applicable law are excluded, particularly if you originate from a restricted territory (Section 3.5) or are subject to government sanctions (Section 3.6).

5.5. Third-party payment platforms. If you authorized payment through a third-party platform (such as a console store or external subscription manager), it is your responsibility to cancel that payment through the same platform. GameGrid does not have control over contracts or payments concluded through external platforms.

5.6. To request a refund, contact billing@wdcgamegrid.com with your account email and a brief description of the issue.

6. Referral Program

6.1. GameGrid offers an optional referral program under which you may share a unique referral link. If someone you refer becomes a paying customer, you may earn a recurring commission, calculated as a percentage of that referred customer's ongoing payments, for as long as the referral remains active and in good standing. Specific commission rates and terms may be configured per referrer and are disclosed to you in your account.

6.2. Self-referral (referring an account you yourself control, directly or indirectly) is prohibited and will be detected and blocked where reasonably identifiable. We may suspend a referral relationship and/or claw back previously paid referral rewards and content creator commission if we determine, in our reasonable judgment, that the referral program is being abused, or if the referred customer charges back a payment through their bank or card issuer. A reward or commission is not clawed back because we refund a payment.

7. Acceptable Use

7.1. You are solely responsible for the content, configuration, and use of the game servers and other services you provision through the Platform ("your Content").

7.2. You agree not to use the Service to: (a) violate any applicable law; (b) infringe any third party's intellectual property or other rights; (c) distribute malware, or otherwise attack, disrupt, or attempt unauthorized access to other customers' servers, GameGrid's infrastructure, or third-party systems; (d) transmit content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, or that infringes on the rights of others; (e) circumvent or attempt to circumvent any usage limit, security control, or access restriction of the Service; (f) resell or sublicense the Service in violation of any separately agreed reseller terms; (g) send unsolicited bulk electronic communications; (h) operate cryptocurrency mining or other computationally intensive proof-of-work processes that consume disproportionate host resources; (i) probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any system or network without authorization, forge packet headers, or gain unauthorized access to third-party systems; (j) host or distribute content that promotes terrorism, violent extremism, or the persecution of protected groups; or (k) share server access credentials with third parties in a way that would allow them to bypass these Terms.

7.3. You are responsible for complying with the license terms and end-user agreements of any third-party game software, mod, or add-on you install or use through the Service, including content obtained through any integrated mod marketplace (e.g., Steam Workshop, CurseForge). GameGrid is not a party to, and does not warrant compliance with, those third-party terms.

7.4. You are responsible for keeping your game server secure. If you expose administrative interfaces to the public, choose weak passwords, or install software from untrusted sources, you accept the risk that comes with those choices. We encourage you to stay informed about security issues that affect the software you run and to apply patches promptly.

7.5. We may suspend or shut down the Service, in whole or in part, right away and without prior notice, if we reasonably believe that your use of the Service creates an imminent security risk, exposes us or others to legal liability, or is causing serious harm to other customers or to our infrastructure. This includes situations where your server is being used to launch denial-of-service or other attacks, even if you did not authorize that activity — for example, because a third party has taken control of your server. Where the situation is not urgent, we will give you notice and a reasonable chance to fix the problem before we suspend or terminate.

7.6. You may report suspected abuse by another customer through our support ticketing system, which includes a dedicated abuse-report category.

8. Backups, Data, and File Management

8.1. The Service includes automatic backups (scheduled backups, governed by the specific game's own retention parameters, and the safety copies we take before actions such as a restore) and manual backups you create. Each server has one backup storage allowance, shared by its automatic and manual backups, currently up to 30 GB per server unless otherwise stated in your account. When the allowance is full, the oldest automatic backup is removed first, and a new manual backup is refused until there is room; manual backups and the safety copies are never removed to make room. Every backup, automatic or manual, is kept for at most 30 days and then deleted; the date each backup will be deleted is shown in the backup management interface. To keep a copy for longer, download it or save it to the Vault (Section 8B). Backups are stored in Wasabi S3 cloud storage. The newest automatic backup of each server is the exception: it is kept until a newer automatic backup replaces it, even when that is longer than 30 days or takes the server over its allowance.

8.2. Restoring a backup is a significant action that may overwrite your server's current state. Where players are currently connected to the server, you will be asked to confirm the restore a second time before it proceeds. We create a safety backup of your server's current state immediately before any restore, and we do not report a restore as successful until we have confirmed the restored server is genuinely healthy and running.

8.3. You are responsible for the content of any file you upload to the Service, including through the file manager or an integrated mod marketplace. Uploaded content is scanned for known-malicious patterns before being made available to a running server; a failed scan will block that specific file from being used.

8.4. Customer backup responsibility. We offer automated and manual backup tools to help protect your data, but no backup system is perfect. We strongly recommend that you keep your own separate copies of anything you cannot afford to lose. We are not responsible for data loss caused by server crashes, mod conflicts, configuration mistakes, or other actions you or your users take.

8.5. You may request a full deletion of your account and associated data, subject to Section 9 (Data Retention) and any minimum retention required by law (e.g., for tax or fraud-prevention records).

8A. Your Players' Data

8A.1. GameGrid records gameplay information about the people who play on your game servers ("your players"), as described in Section 1A of our Privacy Policy: connections, positions, deaths and kills, building, chat and commands, events, economy activity, and a one-way fingerprint and country of each connection (never the address itself). You decide what that information is used for on your servers, and we process it on your behalf to provide the Service.

8A.2. You agree to tell your players that your server records gameplay statistics, for example in your server rules, welcome message or Discord. A sentence you may use: *"This server records gameplay statistics (when you play, where you go in the world, deaths, kills, building, chat and commands) to run and moderate the server. Ask an admin if you want to see or erase yours."*

8A.3. You agree to use your players' data only to run, improve and moderate your servers and their community.

8A.4. You agree not to try to work out a player's connection address, or to identify a player outside the game, from a fingerprint, a country or any other information the Service shows you.

8A.5. A "possible alternative account" is a hint, not proof. You agree never to make it the sole reason for a ban, kick or other sanction.

8A.6. If one of your players asks you to erase their information, you agree to do so promptly with Forget player, and to remove their economy records in your server's Economy page where they ask for that too.

8A.7. You agree not to export or pass your players' data to third parties, except where the law requires it. If you switch on a public leaderboard, public statistics or a public map, what it shows is visible to anyone with access to it, and you are responsible for that choice.

8B. The Vault

8B.1. The Vault keeps saved game worlds with your account rather than with a server. A save is made from one of your GameGrid servers, either from the server itself or from one of its verified backups. You cannot upload a world from anywhere else into the Vault. The account owner and the account's administrators can save, load, download and delete; other users of your account can see the list of saves.

8B.2. The Vault is included free with your account and holds up to 10 GB per account. We may change that amount for an individual account. A single save can hold up to 2 GB of game files.

8B.3. Every save is kept for 12 months from the day it was saved and is then deleted. Loading or downloading a save does not extend that period. We email the account 30 days and 7 days before a save is deleted this way.

8B.4. Deleting a save is immediate and final, whether you delete it, GameGrid support deletes it at your request, or it reaches the end of its 12 months. The save and the key that protects it are destroyed at once, and nobody, including GameGrid, can recover it afterwards. When a save is deleted by GameGrid support or at the end of its 12 months, a notice appears on your account page.

8B.5. Loading a save onto a server replaces the parts of that server you choose to load, such as its world and settings. We take a safety backup of the server immediately before a load, so you can restore the server's previous state from its Backups page. A save contains your server's game files, including its configuration files, so it holds whatever those files hold; secret values in your GameGrid setting presets are left out of a save and are not restored by a load.

8B.6. Your Vault is not deleted when a server is deleted or when a plan ends; the 30-day grace period in Section 9.1 does not apply to it. Without an active plan you can still view, download and delete your saves until each one expires, but you cannot make new saves or load one onto a server. If you close your account, your saves are deleted when you ask us to delete your account data (Section 8.5).

8B.7. Vault responsibility. We take reasonable care of your saves, but no storage system is perfect. We strongly recommend that you keep your own separate copies of anything you cannot afford to lose; you can download any save from your Vault. We are not responsible for data loss caused by server crashes, mod conflicts, configuration mistakes, or other actions you or your users take.

9. Data Retention and Account Cancellation

9.1. If you cancel your subscription or it is not renewed, your server(s) will be stopped and your data retained for a 30-day grace period before being permanently deleted, unless you request earlier deletion.

9.2. We may retain certain records (such as transaction and billing history) for longer than the general retention window where required for legal, tax, fraud-prevention, or accounting purposes.

10. Service Availability and Liability

10.1. We aim to provide reliable, continuous service. Because the internet and the systems that support it are not perfectly reliable, we cannot promise that the Service will be available 100% of the time. Our target is to keep customer servers reachable at least 99% of the time, measured over a rolling 12-month period. This target does not count time when the Service is unavailable because of scheduled maintenance that we announced in advance, support response time, or problems caused by events outside our reasonable control. When an outage does occur, we will work to restore service as quickly as we reasonably can.

10.2. We are not responsible for outages or performance issues caused by factors outside our reasonable control, including internet service provider failures, denial-of-service attacks against third parties, or force majeure events.

10.3. Liability. Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability that we cannot limit or exclude under applicable law — for example, liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or any other liability that Texas law does not permit us to disclaim. Subject to that, and to the extent permitted by law: (a) we are not liable for losses that were not reasonably foreseeable to both parties at the time the contract was formed; (b) we are not liable for loss of profits, loss of business, loss of goodwill, or loss of anticipated savings; and (c) our total liability for any claim is capped as set out in Section 16. These same limits apply to our employees, contractors, and agents.

10.4. Force majeure. We are not liable for any failure or delay in performing our obligations under these Terms when that failure or delay is caused by an event beyond our reasonable control, including acts of war, terrorism, civil unrest, epidemic or pandemic, natural disaster, fire, flood, widespread power or telecommunications outage, government action, or labor dispute. If such an event prevents us from providing the Service for more than thirty (30) consecutive days, either party may cancel the affected subscription, and we will refund any prepaid fees covering the period after the cancellation date.

10.5. Uptime exclusions. The uptime target excludes: (a) scheduled maintenance announced in advance; (b) outages caused by your configuration, mods, or third-party software; (c) outages caused by your violation of these Terms; or (d) force majeure events.

11. Special Termination Rights

11.1. Either party may end this agreement immediately for cause. For purposes of this Section, "cause" means a material breach that is not cured within the cure period (if any) provided elsewhere in these Terms. Examples of cause on your side include: failing to pay an invoice after we have sent at least one reminder and a reasonable opportunity to pay; or breaching any of the obligations in Sections 3.5 (restricted territories), 3.6 (sanctions screening), or 7 (acceptable use).

11.2. We may end the agreement immediately for cause, without prior notice, in any of the following situations:

• We learn, or have a reasonable basis to believe, that you are located in one of the restricted jurisdictions listed in Section 3.5 and are accessing the Service directly or indirectly;
• We learn, or have a reasonable basis to believe, that you are redistributing or reselling the Service to persons located in one of the restricted jurisdictions listed in Section 3.5;
• We learn, or have a reasonable basis to believe, that you are a person or entity on a U.S. government sanctions list within the meaning of Section 3.6. This applies whether you were on such a list when the contract began (and we only discovered it later) or whether you were added to such a list after the contract began;
• You have not paid an invoice after we have sent at least one reminder and given you a reasonable opportunity to pay;
• You have committed a serious violation, or repeated violations, of the acceptable-use rules in Section 7.

11.3. When the agreement ends for cause, your right to use the Service stops right away. Your data will be handled as described in Section 9 (Data Retention).

12. Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless GameGrid and its affiliates, officers, employees, contractors, and agents from any third-party claims, damages, losses, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) that arise out of or relate to: (a) your violation of these Terms; (b) your violation of any law or the rights of a third party, including intellectual-property, privacy, and competition claims; or (c) any content you upload, any configuration you apply to your server, or any third-party software you install on your server. You are solely responsible for the consequences of any third-party application you install through the Service, including any impact it may have on other software, hardware, or systems connected to your server.

13. Support and AI-Assisted Features

13.1. GameGrid provides customer support through a ticketing system and, where enabled, an AI-assisted support chatbot and article-suggestion feature. Any response drafted with AI assistance that is intended to be sent to you as a direct answer from our support team is reviewed by a human staff member before being sent — an AI system never has the final word on a support response to you without that review.

13.2. Content you submit in a support ticket may be used, in a redacted and de-identified form with personal or sensitive information removed, to improve our support knowledge base and support-assistant systems. Personally identifying details are not included in that redacted corpus.

13.3. We do not guarantee the complete or successful resolution of every support issue, particularly where the issue is caused by third-party software, external manufacturer updates, or game-specific bugs outside our control.

14. Intellectual Property

14.1. You retain all rights to your Content (your game server's configuration, world/save data, and any files you upload). By using the Service, you grant GameGrid a limited license to host, store, back up, and transmit your Content solely as necessary to provide the Service to you.

14.2. GameGrid retains all rights to the Platform itself, including its software, branding, and documentation. Nothing in these Terms transfers any GameGrid intellectual property to you.

14.3. Game names, trademarks, and related content are property of their respective owners. GameGrid is not affiliated with or endorsed by any game developer unless explicitly stated.

15. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, GAMEGRID DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE, OR THAT ANY DATA WILL BE PRESERVED WITHOUT LOSS.

16. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, GAMEGRID'S TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE SHALL NOT EXCEED THE AMOUNT YOU PAID TO GAMEGRID FOR THE SERVICE GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY. GAMEGRID SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING LOST PROFITS OR LOST DATA, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

17. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time to reflect legal, technical, or business changes. We will notify you by email of any material change, and continued use of paid services after a material change requires your acceptance of the updated Terms. If you do not accept a material change, you may cancel your account before the change takes effect. If we make a non-material change (such as a clarification or formatting update), we will update the "Last updated" date without requiring separate acceptance.

18. Dispute Resolution

18.1. These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to conflict-of-laws principles.

18.2. Any dispute arising from or relating to these Terms or the Service shall be resolved in the courts of the State of Texas, United States, and you consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of such courts.

19. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable or invalid, that provision will be limited or eliminated to the minimum extent necessary, and the remaining provisions will remain in full force and effect.

20. Contact

Questions about these Terms may be directed to:

• Email: admins@wdcgamegrid.com
• Billing: billing@wdcgamegrid.com
• Support: Open a support ticket

*Last updated: October 2026*