Terms of Service
Effective Date: May 8, 2026
Last Updated: May 10, 2026
1. Welcome to Cold Creek
Cold Creek Gas Plant Simulator ("Cold Creek," "the Simulator," "we," "us," or "our") is a free, browser-based training simulator operated by Josh Winter doing business as Winter Howlers, a sole proprietorship ("Winter Howlers"). These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the website at gasplantsim.com and the simulator hosted there (collectively, the "Service").
By accessing or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
2. What Cold Creek Is
Cold Creek is a browser-based simulator designed to give power engineering students, new operators, and curious folks a feel for running a midstream gas plant. It is offered free of charge. There are no payments, no subscriptions, no ad-supported tiers, and no in-app purchases. If that ever changes, we will update these Terms first.
3. Important Notice About Industrial Training
This is a teaching simulator. Cold Creek is not certified industrial training material. It is not approved by any regulatory body, employer, or certifying authority. You should not use Cold Creek as a substitute for:
- Site-specific training at a real facility.
- Regulatory-required certifications in your jurisdiction.
- Real-plant familiarization, walk-downs, or hands-on operator qualification.
- Your employer's safety, operating, or emergency response procedures.
Always defer to your employer's training program, your facility's operating procedures, and your jurisdiction's regulatory requirements. Cold Creek simplifies, abstracts, and in some cases dramatizes plant behavior for teaching purposes. Real plants do not behave exactly like Cold Creek. Treat it as a learning tool, not a reference document.
4. Your License to Use the Service
Subject to these Terms, Winter Howlers grants you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, revocable license to access and use Cold Creek for your own personal, educational, or internal training use.
This license does not include the right to:
- Resell, rent, or commercially redistribute access to the Service.
- Copy, modify, or create derivative works of the Service or its content.
- Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract the source code, except to the extent applicable law permits.
- Use Cold Creek branding, name, or assets in your own products or marketing without written permission.
If you are a training program, school, or company and want to use Cold Creek as part of an organized curriculum or commercial training offering, contact us at hello@winterhowlers.com first.
5. Acceptable Use
When using Cold Creek, you agree not to:
- Scrape, harvest, or programmatically extract user data or other content from the Service.
- Use bots, scripts, headless browsers, or other automated tools to interact with the Service or inflate scores, sessions, or any other metric.
- Probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service or attempt to bypass any security or authentication measures.
- Interfere with, disrupt, or overload the Service or its underlying infrastructure.
- Submit usernames, profile content, or any other input that is unlawful, harassing, defamatory, obscene, or that infringes someone else's rights.
- Use the Service to violate any law or regulation that applies to you.
We may remove content, suspend accounts, or block access at our discretion if we believe these rules have been broken.
6. Intellectual Property
Cold Creek, including its code, art, sound, simulation logic, scenario design, written content, and the Cold Creek and Winter Howlers names and logos, is owned by Winter Howlers or its licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. Nothing in these Terms transfers any ownership rights to you.
You retain ownership of any content you submit through the enterprise contact form or other input fields. By submitting content, you grant Winter Howlers a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use that content as needed to respond to your inquiry. You are responsible for the content you submit, and you confirm you have the right to submit it.
7. Third-Party Services
Cold Creek runs on third-party infrastructure including Vercel for hosting and analytics, and FormSubmit for enterprise contact form delivery. Your game data is stored locally in your browser and is not processed by any third-party backend. See our Privacy Policy for details on what data is collected and how it is handled.
8. Disclaimer of Warranties
The Service is provided "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE," with all faults and without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Winter Howlers disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, or statutory, including but not limited to:
- Implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.
- Any warranty that the Service will be accurate, reliable, uninterrupted, error-free, or secure.
- Any warranty that Cold Creek accurately represents real plant behavior, real operating procedures, or real safety conditions.
- Any warranty that use of Cold Creek will result in any specific learning outcome, certification, employment, or qualification.
You use the Service at your own risk.
9. Limitation of Liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Winter Howlers, Josh Winter, and any contractors, contributors, or affiliates will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost profits, lost data, business interruption, personal injury, or any damages arising from your use of or inability to use the Service.
Because Cold Creek is provided to you free of charge, our total cumulative liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or relating to the Service or these Terms is limited to zero dollars (USD $0.00). Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Where required by law, our liability is limited to the minimum amount permitted.
10. Indemnification
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Winter Howlers and Josh Winter from and against any claims, damages, losses, costs, or expenses (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or related to your misuse of the Service, your violation of these Terms, your violation of applicable law, or your infringement of any third party's rights.
11. Termination
We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service at any time, with or without notice, for any reason, including if we believe you have violated these Terms. You may stop using the Service at any time. Sections that by their nature should survive termination will survive, including intellectual property, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law.
12. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms from time to time. When we do, we update the "Last Updated" date at the top. For material changes, we will make reasonable effort to give notice through the Service. Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.
13. Governing Law
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of North Dakota, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.
14. Dispute Resolution
If you have a dispute with us, please contact hello@winterhowlers.com first. We will try in good faith to resolve any dispute informally within 60 days.
If we cannot resolve the dispute informally, you and Winter Howlers agree that any remaining dispute will be resolved by binding individual arbitration administered under the rules of a recognized arbitration provider in the State of North Dakota, rather than in court, except that either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies. You and Winter Howlers each waive the right to a jury trial and the right to participate in a class action. If any part of this section is found unenforceable, the remainder still applies, and any claim that cannot be arbitrated will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in North Dakota.
15. Miscellaneous
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and Winter Howlers regarding the Service. If any part of these Terms is held unenforceable, the rest stays in effect. Our failure to enforce any provision is not a waiver of our right to do so later. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to a successor or affiliate. Nothing in these Terms creates an employment, partnership, agency, or joint venture relationship between you and Winter Howlers.
16. Contact
Questions about these Terms? Reach out:
Winter Howlers
Attn: Josh Winter
Email: hello@winterhowlers.com