Previously: ‘Crimson Room’ And Toshimitsu Takagi’s Colorful Room Escape Games.

If you were online in the mid-to-late 2000s, you’ll probably remember a lot of horror content bopping around the internet aimed at blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. This, you’ll recall, was when Slenderman first reared his faceless head on the Something Awful forums; it was when “Louise Paxton” — actually actor Zoe Richards — seemingly “went missing” in London; and — if you have a really good memory — you might even remember it as when you could visit Hotel 626 and try to survive the experience.

A short, browser-based video game, Hotel 626 dropped players into a haunted hotel and dared them to make it out alive. Floor after floor, you’d encounter ghosts and killers and shadowy voids, all of which were just waiting to dispatch you — or, perhaps more accurately, to add you to its collection of residents. Not unlike another famous hotel I could name, you could check out any time you liked, but you could never leave.

[Like what you read? Check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available from Chronicle Books now!]

The really wild thing, though, is what Hotel 626 really was: It was an advertisement. An interactive one, yes, but an advertisement nonetheless.

As for what it was advertising?

Unless you already know, I guarantee you’ll never guess.

It was advertising… Doritos.

Part of a major advertising push from Frito-Lay, which owns not just the Doritos brand, but also other snack chip brands such as Cheetos, Tostitos, and the titular Fritos and Lay’s, Hotel 626 was frequently described by those who played it as one of the scariest games on the internet… until, suddenly, it just disappeared.

Just a few years after its 2008 launch, you see, Hotel 626 vanished from the internet. And ever since, people have been trying to figure out exactly what happened to it and why.

You’ll see a lot of claims that Hotel 626 and its followup, Asylum 626, were “so scary they got removed from the internet” or that they were taken offline because they “traumatized kids so badly,” but although both games were quite effective, none of that is exactly true.

The real reason Hotel 626 and Asylum 626 eventually went down? Frito-Lay has, to the best of my knowledge, never said outright, but honestly, it’s probably something as simple as the company no longer wanting or needing to pay the hosting fees, or to keep the server space for them, or something akin to that.

It’s also possible that an FTC complaint filed in 2011 played into the removal of both games from the internet (we’ll talk about that in a bit, although for the record, spokespeople for Frito-Lay at the time refuted the claims laid out in the complaint) — but ultimately, these two games were just ads, after all. And ads have finite lifespans.

A curious thing has arisen, however, as a result of the fact that neither Hotel 626 nor Asylum 626 remain accessible in any playable form today: A good deal of mythologizing has wound its way around the internet, making it somewhat difficult to differentiate between what people have said happened in the games versus what actually did happen. This mythologizing includes the “so scary they had to get rid of them” claims — but also claims about some of the more unique gameplay conventions they had seemingly had, and how they may have been implemented.

Sure, you’ll see a lot of quick “remember when?”-type writeups that include mention of these gameplay conventions; generally, though, these writeups lack sourcing or citations — it’s all just the same stuff, repeated over and over and over again without any scrutinization or deeper research.

So that’s what we’re going to attempt to address here: We’re going to try to clear up exactly what happened in these games and how it all played out, as well as the broader story surrounding their creation and eventual demise.

Are you ready?

Let me grab your bags for you.

It’s time to check in.

Back From The Dead: Snack Strong Productions And The Hotel 626 Project

It’s 2008. The internet is no longer nascent, but it’s also not quite where it’s at today. The idea of virality is on the rise, and with high-speed internet becoming widely spread, the online space seems full of possibilities.

At this time, Frito-Lay — the subsidiary of PepsiCo that handles, as its name might suggest, various chip-centric snack food brands — had plans to re-release two long-discontinued flavors of Doritos: Taco and Four Cheese. Viewed from a slightly different perspective, though, these flavors weren’t just set to return; they were set to come back from the dead. And with the launch planned for the fall of 2008, the brand latched onto this perspective: Halloween was, after all, just around the corner; what better way could there be to celebrate — and, more importantly, to advertise — this miraculous rise from the grave than with a horror-themed online adventure?

So, after teasing the upcoming experience with a short video released on YouTube on Oct. 1, 2008, Hotel 626 began checking in guests on Halloween itself.

Headed up by ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, under the guise of “Snack Strong Productions” and working alongside the Swedish production company B-Reel, Hotel 626 was intended to be a new kind of advertising experience — one that was as “intense” as the flavors it was shilling. It would be a game playable right in your web browser, offering thrills and chills from a terrifying first-person perspective — but, notably, no actual corn chips. Triangles, yes; actual Doritos, no.

(You’ll also sometimes see creative agency Wolfgang credited for Hotel 626, despite the fact that Wolfgang didn’t exist until 2016. This is because Mike Geiger, one of Wolfgang’s founders, was formerly at Goodby, where he worked on the Hotel 626 project; he was the game’s director of interactive production.)

Per Hartley Rusen, credited as the project’s associate creative director, Hotel 626 had a total budget of less than $400,000 — not a lot for what Rusen describes on his Vimeo account as “a full, ground-up site production” — and was completed on an incredibly tight timeline. The finished game, which would see players attempting to escape the titular hotel surviving a series of encounters with unpleasant entities and supernatural phenomena, blended 3D animation with full-motion video. The video portions were shot on location in a no-longer-operational psychiatric facility in Sweden.

Hotel 626 ran on Flash during its Adobe era — likely either Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, which was released in 2007, or its 2008 counterpart, Adobe Flash CS4 — but it wasn’t a simple point-and-click adventure. It also incorporated a number of gameplay conventions unusual for the time aimed at making the experience much more immediate for players than it might otherwise be.

For one thing, the game was only playable at night, between the hours of 6pm and 6am — hence its name: Hotel 626, or Six To Six. As most savvy gamers these days know, there are easy ways to get around time locks like this one; even back in 2008, all you had to do in order to access Hotel 626 outside of its normal operating hours was to change the time on your computer’s internal clock. Still, though: The idea that you had to play it at night meant that, should you choose to meet the game where it was, you’d be playing it in the scariest possible environment — that is, in the dark. 

Some elements of the game were also randomized, meaning that you might not get exactly the same experience twice. This gave it replay value; you could return to Hotel 626 after making it through previously and still not be able to anticipate everything that was coming based on your past playthroughs.

And lastly, Hotel 626 found some ways to invade your real, actual life, if you gave it permission to do so: You could allow the game to utilize your computer’s web cam and microphone for some hands-on gameplay, and even let it contact you through… other means outside the browser itself. You didn’t have to give it permission to do this if you didn’t want to; alternate ways to play were built directly into the game to account for players who either didn’t have a web cam or microphone (remember, it was 2008 — computers didn’t necessarily come with them built-in at the time), or who were leery about granting their browser access to them. But the full experience? It brought the game out of your computer screen and into your own physical space.

So: What actually happened in the game? Again, putting together a full summary is a bit tricky, due to the fact that the game is no longer playable in any form; what’s more, both the variations in gameplay and the real-life invasions aren’t particularly well documented, making it somewhat difficult to see the full picture.

But, through a combination of a handful of playthrough videos recorded at the time the game was live, plus some behind-the-scenes content and a case study video about the advertising campaign as a whole, here’s as complete an account of Hotel 626 as I can make — including as many details about the randomized variations as I could find, and with specifics about how some of the more unique gameplay elements worked in practice.

Here’s what might have happened, should you have chosen to venture into Hotel 626.

Your Room Is Ready: Checking Into Hotel 626

The Hotel 626 experience started, as most hotel stays do, with a stop at the check-in desk.

Heading to hotel626.com would present you with one of two screens, depending on what time of day it was when you visited. If you went outside the hours of 6pm to 6am, you’d see a screen telling you the hotel was currently closed and instructing you to come back later. However, if you went between the hours of 6pm and 6am, you’d be given a form to fill out: You were to supply your name, your email, and your date of birth, and to give yourself a password. (Why the password was required has never been made clear; it didn’t seem to make an account, and therefore there’s really no reason it would need password access, but oh well.)

You were also given the option to allow your browser to access your web cam and microphone. If you ticked the box granting the game these permissions, you’d be presented with tests of both devices: A box would appear with your face as viewed by your web cam inside it, and you’d be able to select your microphone input and make sure it was detecting sound properly.

Then, after a quick welcome message — “Thank you for staying with us at Hotel 626. Have a good night’s sleep and we’ll see you in the morning” — you’d be thrown into the game.

Your goal would be to survive the night in Hotel 626 by making it through 10 different scenarios, or hazards, as I’ve come to think of them. How far you were at any given time could be determined by a quick glance at the bottom left of your screen, where you’d see a series of 10 tally marks — two sets of five. A new tally mark would highlight itself with each hazard you survived.

When you started, only one tally mark would be lit — one tally mark for your first challenge: Simply waking up from a nightmare… to find yourself in a new nightmare. One that, it would turn out, was all too real.

Hazard I: Waking Up

Loading screens played a surprisingly integral part in surviving Hotel 626. The first one you’d see read, “ONLY BY CONFRONTING YOUR DARKEST FEARS CAN YOU FIND THE LIGHT.”

Then, you’d wake up. Looking around your surroundings, you’d see you were in a somewhat outdated hotel room — one with wood paneling on the walls, an alarm clock with flipping cards instead of an LCD screen, that kind of thing.

You’d hear a scream outside your room. You’d hurriedly dress yourself, and then exit to the hallway.

Hazard II: The Hallway Void

Here, a loading screen would give you a hint about what’s to come: “ONE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHERS,” it read.

Out in the hallway — where, you’d be wise to note, both the wall sconces and all the number plates on the doors to the other rooms would be curiously triangle-shaped (get it?) — the lights would suddenly begin to blow. You’d run down the hallway, only to be confronted by some kind of dark, shadowy void lurking at the end of it.

If you dallied too long, the void would eat you.

If you were observant enough, however, you’d notice that one of the doors in the hallway lacked the triangular number plate present on all of the others — that one was not like the others. And if acted quickly enough, you could escape the void by entering the room behind that door.

Hazard III: The Maid

The loading screen would again give you an important hint here, reading, “SHE LIVES IN DARKNESS. SHOW HER THE LIGHT.”

You’d now find yourself in a large, institutional shower room. There were no lights; it would be dark and difficult to see. So, you’d pull out a digital camera (yes, an actual camera, not a phone — again, this was 2008, just a year after the release of the very first iPhone; most of us still had flip phones at the time, with nary a flashlight or camera function in sight) and start firing off the flash to see — and, it would soon become clear, to survive.

You weren’t alone in the room, you see. There was also a… creature of some sort — a ghost who had once worked in housekeeping, judging from her maid’s uniform — lurking in the darkness. If you were too slow, she’d eat you, just like the void would have in the previous hazard. However, if you managed to fire off the camera’s flash at her enough times — if you, as you were told, showed her the light — you’d be able to fend her off and escape back out into the hallway.

Hazard IV: The Stairwell Void

The next loading screen hint would let you know that you were going to have to hustle to survive the upcoming hazard: It read, “JUST IN TIME.”

When you returned to the hallway, you’d find that the void was gone and that you now had access to a door at the end. Going through the door would place you in a triangular stairwell (get it?) with red railings. You’d travel down it, only for the void to return; it would be waiting for you midway down the stairs. If you were too slow, it would swallow you and you’d fall to your death. But if you were quick enough to spot the only usable door in the hallway, you’d be able to escape through it onto a new floor.

Hazard V: The Child

After entering a room from the new floor’s hallway, the loading screen would tell you explicitly what you’d have to do next: “SING ME A LULLABY.”

The room in which you would find yourself now was moldy and decrepit, containing a fireplace, a lamp, a chair, and another door on the opposite wall. Additionally — and most importantly — you’d find a cot with a small child in it, asleep, in the center of the room.

Here, we get one of the first possible variations in the gameplay: If you had allowed the game access to your mic, you’d have to sing a lullaby into it — literally — to keep the child from waking. If you didn’t, you’d be presented with an on-screen prompt at the bottom of the screen to “wind the music box” using your mouse or keyboard. Fail, and the child would wake up and eat you. Succeed, and you’d be able to continue on.

You still had to escape the room, though — without waking up the child. A new prompt at the bottom of the screen would tell you to “keep your balance to walk quietly”; the mini-game that followed, meanwhile, saw you trying to keep a sliding dot in the middle of a bar. Fail to move softly, and the child would again wake up and eat you. Succeed, however, and you’d be able to make it out the door into another hallway…

…Only to be suddenly knocked out by an unseen force.

Hazard VI: The Hallway

The loading screen here would inform you that you were about to be “HELPLESS?” — which is true: This hazard is a cutscene only, with no action able to be taken by the player. Not unlike the very first scene in Hotel 626, it’s a little odd that it’s considered a hazard in the first place; it does, however, tick off one of the tally marks, so to the game, at least, it counts.

In any event, when you came to, you’d find yourself being dragged along the hotel’s hallway. A handful of doors would be open, allowing you a glimpse of the silhouettes inside: A girl jumping rope; a figure just… standing there; something climbing on the ceiling.

You’d drift in and out of consciousness until you reach the next hazard.

Hazard VII: Straitjacket

The loading screen hint this time: “HE KNOWS THE WAY.”

“He” would turn out to be a man in a straitjacket, who you’d meet when you came to again. It would be just you and him in a small, bare room with scribbled drawings all over the walls. The door, meanwhile, had a keypad on it with the numbers zero through nine, a star button, and a pound key.

If you listened closely, you’d hear a sequence of three words, presumably being spoken by the man in the straitjacket — words which, you’d (hopefully) figure out, referred to the drawings on the walls: For instance, “Hands. Spider. Horse.” Each of these drawings had a number associated with it: The hands had a certain number of fingers; the spider and the horse each had a certain number of legs; and so on.

Inputting the numbers indicated by this sequence into the keypad would allow you to escape — but, you couldn’t just look up the sequence in a walkthrough. Here, we have the second situation in which you might experience some variation: The sequence was randomized, with the code to escape being different each time.

Escaping deposited you in one of the hotel’s hallways once again, after which you’d enter yet another room.

The path out of this hotel was a long one.

Hazard VIII: The Photos

You’d find this loading screen’s hint most useful if you took it literally: “FIND YOURSELF A WAY OUT.”

The room in which you’d find yourself now was dark, with muffled thumping sounds and an angry voice floating up at you from the darkness. Listening closely would allow some of the sounds to resolve into words: “HEY. GET OUT OF THERE.” Clearly something or someone was looking for you.

Apparently, you had a flashlight with you all along, though (why didn’t you use it against the maid? Who knows!), because at this point, you’d turn it on, illuminating a sizeable collection of Polaroid photographs of people’s faces clipped on strings and hung up like garlands. These peoples’ names were all written on the white parts at the bottoms of the photos.

Here, we get our third variation in the gameplay: If you had allowed the game access to your web cam, guess what? When it was “testing” the device before the start of the game, what it actually did was take a picture of you. Your photo would, therefore, be hidden amidst the collection of Polaroids in this room. Finding the photo of yourself and clicking on it would somehow transport you out of the room to safety — that is, literally finding yourself was, in fact, your way out.

If you did not allow the game access to your web cam, you’d be looking instead for a photograph of the hotel’s ubiquitous hallway. Clicking it would also transport you to safety.

As with all of the other hazards, you only had so long to “find yourself a way out”; failing to do so in time would result you in being caught by whoever was hunting you. If you managed to succeed, however, you’d wind up back in another hallway, this time facing a rotary telephone on a small table.

Hazard IX: The Phone Call

The loading screen here again would tell you exactly how to survive the next hazard: “ANSWER AND YOU’LL HAVE THE ANSWERS.”

And here, too, is where the third and most infamous variation in gameplay occurred: Under the right circumstances, you could receive a call on your actual phone. If you answered it, it would guide you through the next section.

Here’s the thing, though: I read and watched a lot of short blog posts and videos talking about how the game could call you in real life, but couldn’t find any full playthrough videos where it actually happened — just one small snippet which featured only this section of the game without any other context. Furthermore, you’ll recall that the “check-in” screen at the beginning did not have anywhere for players to input their phone numbers — just name, birthdate, and email, making it unclear where the game would have gotten your number from in order to call.

As such, over time, this particular gameplay mechanic gained a sort of mythical quality; it’s frequently mentioned, usually in a tone that conveys, “Can you believe it?!?! It actually called you!!!”, but basically never includes any details about how it actually worked in practice. Indeed, there was so little information available about the supposed phone call that, for a brief period during my research process, I started to think that maybe it had never happened in the first place.

It took finding that case study video on the entire ad campaign I mentioned earlier to actually determine that, yes, it did in fact happen — and, moreover, to see how it happened.

Here’s how it worked:

After you left the photograph room, you’d be presented with a screen that gave you the option to input your phone number. “We need to talk,” the screen read. “Enter your phone number where you can be reached right now.” Then you could either do as instructed and click “Continue,” or you could refrain and click “No thanks.”

If you gave the game your phone number, the phone connected to that number would ring immediately after you clicked “Continue.” If you answered it, you would hear a voice on the other end saying, “If you want to get out of here alive, do exactly what I say. There isn’t that much time. Quick — head down the hallway.”

If you clicked “No thanks” — or if you failed to answer the call when your phone rang — then the same dialogue would simply come from within the game itself, albeit preceded by the line, “Why didn’t you pick up the phone?!”

I can only assume that all of the playthrough videos I watched that didn’t feature the actual phone call simply cut this entire screen out in the editing process. This is perhaps understandable — no one wants to put their phone number on the internet (bad idea!) — although given that you didn’t have to put anything there, I’m not sure why so many videos made that editing choice. The lack of documentation of that screen is what made it so hard to determine whether it had actually happened at all.

Could the editing choice have been made simply due to flow? Sure; the game choosing to pause the action right at that moment to have you input your phone number does sort of kill the vibe, as it were, so the same could have been true for videos documenting the game as it was played. But this, in turn, prompts another question: Why was the game’s design like this in the first place? Why not have the phone number included in the initial check-in screen before the game even begins, so as to avoid the interruption?

My best guess is that putting it here was the easiest way to carry off the effect. It’s pretty clear that putting your number in and clicking “Continue” was an immediate trigger. There may not have been an easy way — or even any possible way at the time — to delay the phone call from the opening check-in screen until this point in the game. But an immediate action — like typing something in and clicking “Continue” — can easily trigger an automated workflow sequence that would result in your phone receiving a call right then and there. It’s a simple “If, then” situation.

In any event, whether you were listening to the voice through your actual phone or just through your computer within the game itself, your correspondent would proceed to give you instructions as you sped through the hallways: It would tell you when to turn, which direction to turn, and so on, until finally, you’d reach a door with an “Exit” sign over it.

“This is the only way out,” the voice would tell you.

So what would you do? You’d go through it, of course.

Hazard X: Escape…?

The loading screen here would read only, “YOUR CHECK-OUT TIME IS NOW.” You couldn’t be blamed if you thought you were finally safe.

But if you traveled through the stairwell the “Exit” door dropped you off in — and if you went through one last door that seemed to lead out from the building — and if you walked through the darkness to your parked car — and if you got into the driver’s seat — and if you turned the key in the ignition…

…You might ultimately have questioned whether you had actually escaped at all.

Because as you adjusted the rearview mirror, suddenly, you’d receive one, last scare: One of the characters you met over the course of the game — the maid, the child, the straitjacket man — grinning up at you from the backseat, in one final randomized encounter.

The screen would go white, and the Polaroid featuring your name — and your face, if you allowed the game access to your web cam — would float down into the center, with the 10 tally marks all filled in on the white part of the photograph.

At this point, you could also click a box that would allow your photograph to appear in the Polaroid gallery for other players during that particular hazard — as well as during this finishing screen: Because here, other photographs began to drift down and join yours, all of actual players and complete with tally marks corresponding to the number of hazards they survived.

But wait! There’s more!… Or at least, there was, if you had chosen to give the game your phone number during Hazard IX: Sometime after the game ended, you’d receive another call. The same voice that guided you through the hallways during that final escape would speak to you yet again: “You made it out… but we’ll see you again. In the darkness.”

Someone’s Out To Make A Sequel: From Hotel 626 To Asylum 626

It sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Here’s the wild thing: All of that? It amounted only to 10 to 15 minutes of gameplay in total. And yet — like P.T. would do six years later — Hotel 626 has since gained a reputation as one of the scariest video games ever launched, even though no one will ever get to play it again. (Although P.T., it should be noted, can still be accessed in a few ways, if you’re willing to put in the effort.)

It was also an enormously successful ad campaign, despite the fact that no snack foods appeared anywhere within it. At the time the case study on the Hotel 626 project was put together, 2.5 million people spread across 136 countries had played the game; it won big at numerous awards in the advertising field in 2009, including at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and the D&AD Awards; and, crucially, it did what it meant to do: It sold Doritos. The “back from the dead” flavors reportedly sold out, with sales totaling two million bags in just three weeks.

In fact, Hotel 626 was so successful that Frito-Lay opted to launch a follow-up campaign a year later, this time to celebrate the re-release of two more “back from the dead” Doritos flavors: Black Pepper Jack and Smoking Cheddar BBQ. Titled Asylum 626, it was again headed up by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners under the “Snack Strong Productions” banner, and like its predecessor, it was only playable from 6pm to 6am every day starting during the 2009 Halloween season.

This time, though, you weren’t escaping a hotel, but living through traumatic memories as you flashed back and forth between a reality in which you were strapped to an operating table while a sadistic doctor experimented on you and the reality inside your own mind. It was reportedly inspired by the location in which the full-motion video for Hotel 626 was shot, although that particular facility had been torn down by the time Asylum 626 went into production.

I’m admittedly less interested in Asylum 626, so I’m not going to spend a ton of time on it here (though you can watch a playthrough here, if you want. It’s much shorter than Hotel 626, coming in at only about seven minutes, so it’s less of a time commitment, if that’s a concern for you). As a game, I don’t think it hangs together as well as Hotel 626; it was meant to be less linear in terms of its storytelling and experience, but ultimately, this choice doesn’t really work and the game just ends up muddled and underwhelming. It’s also, y’know, pretty stigmatizing, in the way that the-inmates-are-running-the-asylum stories often are.

And, lastly, it was a much more obvious advertisement than Hotel 626 was, requiring players to go out and actually purchase a bag of Doritos in order to complete the game. The bags had a QR code on them; scanning the code with your web cam while in-game would allow you to see the final reveal and the story’s denouement. And honestly, even though, yes, these games were always ads, that added step just… feels kind of icky.

(The worst part is that the reveal isn’t even that good. You can see it here, although be prepared for low recording quality. Again: It’s all a muddled mess and I’m not really sure what the takeaway was supposed to be besides “Buy Doritos.”)

In any event, though, with these two games — especially the first one — gaining as much traction as they did, it was something of a surprise when they went offline just a few years later.

It was even more of a surprise when you consider that, originally, there seem to have been plans to keep the 626 project going: In an interview with Goodby’s Hunter Hindman, Rick Condos, and Mark Sobier published at AdAge in September 2009 in advance of Asylum 626’s debut, Hindman was asked, “If you were to do again, what, if anything would you do differently?” He replied as follows: “Nothing. But you will certainly see some of the lessons we learn this year affect the next release of the 626 franchise in 2010.”

But: Nothing was forthcoming in 2010. And we haven’t heard a peep from the 626 games since.

So: What happened? Where did Hotel 6262 and Asylum 626 go? And why?

Again, I think the answer is simpler than many would perhaps want — but it’s an interesting conundrum all the same.

The Case Of The Vanishing Browser Games

As we dive further into the investigation, it’s worth looking at the timeline of what was going with the actual websites — with hotel626.com and asylum626.com. It’s worth noting that, although neither website is currently live, the domains are still registered — and Frito-Lay still holds the registration in both cases.

According to the WHOIS records for hotel626.com, the domain was first registered on Aug. 27, 2008 by Frito-Lay. After the game went live during the 2008 Halloween season, it remained accessible through the end of 2011, per captures viewable via the Wayback Machine.

By early 2012, however, the game itself was gone, although visiting hotel626.com showed you the following message before redirecting you to Doritos.com:  “Hope you had a Happy Halloween. Hotel 626 and Asylum 626 are gone, but check back for future ‘back from beyond’ offerings.”

Throughout the following few years, a handful of other things happened when you tried to visit hotel626.com: In early 2013, for instance, it was “unavailable for maintenance,” according to an otherwise blank screen displayed; later in 2013, it went to a “netCorps WordPress Evaluation Site” (netCorps seems to be an organization that assists nonprofits with any and all tech needs, so I’m not entirely sure why hotel626.com would fall under that banner); and by 2016, it redirected to a PHP login page, which, uh, probably should not have been accessible to the general public. These days, it’s simply offline, with the connection timing out whenever you try to load the page.

However, Frito-Lay still holds the registration for the hotel626.com domain. It’s been set for expiration a number of times, but each time, Frito-Lay has renewed it, and then continued to sit on it.

Per the WHOIS records, it was originally set to expire on Aug. 27, 2018 — 10 years after it was first registered — only to be renewed a few days before, on Aug. 23. The new expiry was set for Aug. 27, 2020 — and again, it was renewed on Aug. 23 of that year. The new expiry then became Aug. 27, 2022, and, you guessed it: It was renewed again and the expiry date set for Aug. 24, 2024. And finally, on Aug. 23, 2024, it received its latest renewal; the domain is still registered to Frito-Lay until Aug. 27, 2026.

The asylum626.com domain followed a similar pattern: The domain was registered by Frito-Lay on May 26, 2009, in advance of the game’s 2009 Halloween season debut, with an expiry set for May 26, 2017. It was renewed on May 22, 2017 and the new expiry set for May 26, 2019; then it was renewed again on May 22, 2019 and the new expiry set for May 26, 2021; the next renewal occurred on May 22, 2021, with the new expiry set for May 26, 2023; and then it was renewed again on May 22, 2023 and the new expiry set for May 26, 2025.

Also like hotel626.com, asylum626.com was operational from the game’s 2009 debut until the end of 2011, at which point the domain began redirecting to Doritos.com, then the netCorps thing, and then the PHP login. It, too, is now offline, timing out whenever you attempt to load the page.

All of that provides a fairly specific timeframe in which the two websites were operational — which, in turn, actually does tell us a lot about why they may have been taken offline when they were.

The biggest factor is that, after several years in operation, the games almost certainly had outlived their usefulness as advertisements. I’m not even sure if the “back from the dead” flavors were still available by the time the websites went offline — and, well… if the product isn’t available anymore, it doesn’t exactly make sense to keep advertising it.

Furthermore, at that point, Flash was no longer the cutting-edge technology that it once was; by the end of 2011, the move towards different tools and programming languages to accomplish what had once been achievable only with Flash was in full motion. Put simply, the Hotel 626 and Asylum 626 websites may simply no longer have worked properly due to the technology becoming obsolete.

Combined, these two factors could very easily have killed the games as they were: They were simply outdated both in terms of form and content.

But what stopped the franchise from progressing beyond these early examples? Couldn’t it have evolved to suit changing tastes and technologies?

I mean, sure… but there’s also this: Despite Hotel 626 in particular being incredibly effective, both games were also quite invasive — and with the conversation around online privacy and security growing as it was in the early 2010s, it may simply not have been possible to continue in that same vein moving forwards.

Now is the time when we should talk about that FTC complaint I mentioned earlier.

Here’s what went down:

In October of 2011, a complaint against Frito-Lay was filed with the Federal Trade Commission. The complaint was aimed not just at Hotel 626 and Asylum 626, but at the broader advertising strategy of which they were a part — the whole “Snack Strong Productions” conceit. 

The complaint, which centered primarily around the fact that this strategy was targeted towards teens, was three-pronged: It alleged that the Snack Strong ad campaigns were “[disguised]… as entertaining video games, concerts, and other immersive forms of entertainment, thus making it difficult for teens to recognize them as marketing and to be skeptical about the messages they present”; that they “[claim] to protect teens’ privacy but fail to do so,” ultimately “[collecting and using] teens’ personal information without meaningful notice and consent”; and that they demonstrate viral marketing “[used]… in ways that violate the FTC endorsement guidelines.”

At the time, representatives for Frito-Lay refuted the three claims laid out in the complaint, telling NBC News that they believed the filing “[contained] numerous inaccuracies and mischaracterizations.” In an emailed statement, company reps further said, “PepsiCo and its Frito-Lay division are committed to responsible and ethical marketing practices. Our marketing programs, which are often innovative, comply with applicable law and regulations.”

A spokesperson for the FTC, meanwhile, told NBC News that the agency would “review [the complaint] carefully,” but had nothing more to say at the time.

The big issue with the 626 games cited in the complaint involved privacy — and, yeah, it’s worth noting that guidelines and laws have tightened up since then. A lot of what those two games did in the late 2000s would no longer be permissible now, in the 2020s, especially with regards to how they used your social media.

Asylum 626, you see, did something that Hotel 626 did not: In the opening screens, it encouraged players to connect their Facebook and Twitter accounts to the game — without clearly informing players that, if connected, the game would post to their accounts posing as them. The fact that it wasn’t crystal clear that, by allowing the connection, the game would be posting directly to your social media pages, posing as you, without your knowledge that it was going to do so? Not so good, whether you’re a kid, teen, or adult!

As far as I know, though, nothing ever came of the complaint directly; I haven’t been able to find any followups or additional reporting on it, which suggests that it quietly died without any further action.

In 2012 and 2013, though, the FTC updated a ton of its guidelines, which in turn led to a lot of advertising-related legislation being summarily updated, as well. These updates included slew of guidelines within the realm of privacy and data security, among them some retooling of the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act.

My sense is that, following these updates, Hotel 626 and Asylum 626 literally couldn’t exist beyond the window in which they operated, but, well… do with all that what you will.

The Lost Future Of The 626 Franchise

So where does that leave us now? Lost, mostly.

Since the games haven’t been meaningfully preserved in playable form, they’re now considered lost media. Occasionally, you’ll see download links floating around with claims that they contain Hotel 626, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever gotten them working; at most, they’ve unearthed fragments of the game, nearly all of which aren’t interactive in any way.

What’s more, given that both Hotel 626 and Asylum 626 were and are the property of a major corporation, they’re unlikely to reemerge from any unofficial sources without significant challenge from the company that owns them. Late-stage capitalism remains, as always, why we can’t have nice things.

I do find it interesting, though, that Frito-Lay has maintained the domain registrations for both hotel626.com and asylum626.com. They might just be sitting on them to prevent them from being snapped up by anyone else… or, maybe, they might be hanging onto them just in case.

Just in case of what?

Just in case the 626 project, like the chip flavors it was created to advertise, comes back from the dead.

It might, after all.

You never know.

We may have escaped… but they’ll see us again, they told us.

In the darkness.

***

Follow The Ghost In My Machine on Bluesky @GhostMachine13.bsky.social, Twitter @GhostMachine13, and Facebook @TheGhostInMyMachine. And for more games, don’t forget to check out Dangerous Games To Play In The Dark, available now from Chronicle Books!

[Photos via SuperBioSOCK (1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16), tomy emerson (2, 14, 17, 18), SnackStrongPresents (3), SkatterBrained (4, 5, ), Spazbo4 (13)/YouTube; case study (11)]

Source: https://theghostinmymachine.com/2025/02/10/what-happened-to-hotel-626-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-scariest-doritos-fueled-game-youll-never-play/