What if they actually weren't there for years?

It's been established since the beginning that gang have been stuck in there for years. While I have no concrete evidence, I have a theory that they only think they've been there that long. My idea is that the flow of time in the digital circus isn't congruent with real life time. Think of games like Fnaf, Minecraft or GTA where literally days can pass in minutes. Caine even explains in the first episode that night and day don't operate like our world. Now, think of this. If they truly have been stuck there for years, how come no one has raised any alarms. The gang members obviously have people in their lives, family, friends and coworkers. They've mentioned or implied them in various moments throughout the season. If they've been in their for years, someone ought to have noticed and maybe contacted the authorities to investigate. It's not like the gang were in some secret location before hand since Pomni casually mentioned picking up a weird headset in the first episode. That casualness means the headset was a random occurrence so it's not like they were in some secret lab or something. They were probably doing their routine and came across it. They would've gone missing and a search would've been made and probably come across their real life bodies easily, and likely anything on the scene would influence their presence in the circus, but we don't see that happening. I believe because they haven't been gone long enough for anyone to notice and they only think they've been stuck for that long because of the internal mechanics of the game.