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Fine Print Says Game Store Owns Your Soul

Posted by samzenpus on from the anything-to-beat-this-level dept.

mr_sifter writes "UK games retailer GameStation revealed that it legally owns the souls of thousands of customers, thanks to a clause it secretly added to the online terms and conditions for its website. The 'Immortal Soul Clause' was added as part of an attempt to highlight how few customers read the terms and conditions of an online sale. GameStation claims that 88 percent of customers did not read the clause, which gives legal ownership of the customer's soul over to the UK-based games retailer. The remaining 12 percent of customers however did notice the clause and clicked the relevant opt-out box, netting themselves a £5 GBP gift voucher in the process."

21 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Legally owns.... by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Insightful

    for sufficient definitions of "unconscionable contract".

    --
    The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    1. Re:Legally owns.... by spun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      for sufficient definitions of "unconscionable contract".

      Or for sufficient definitions of 'joke.'

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
    2. Re:Legally owns.... by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's going to be one interesting court case, especially when the time for evidence comes.

      Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks?...

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Legally owns.... by mr_mischief · · Score: 3, Funny

      Two words: penis envy.

    4. Re:Legally owns.... by OolimPhon · · Score: 3, Funny

      You forgot about the lawyers...

    5. Re:Legally owns.... by BitZtream · · Score: 3, Funny

      I always thought Wookies had detachable penii, and called them Ewoks

      --
      Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
    6. Re:Legally owns.... by Tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What you are claiming is merely a presumption, and one of many possible scenarios

      Exactly my point. I was showing the GP that his story is just one of many, by making up my own. Since we're talking about the presumed motivations of hypothetical beings, it is a little difficult to ascertain the truth, or even just a probability.

      but religion as a fundamental belief structure has yet to be proven one way or another,

      Proven as what? As a belief structure? I think we're done with that. As "true" or "false"? That's trivial: We have about a dozen large religions, all mutually exclusive, all claiming that they and only they are in posession of the truth. By their own internal logic, at most one of them can be. If elven of them are wrong, what are the chances that the 12th is right?

      Socrates when he said "all that I know is that I know nothing." Understanding that there are gaps in human knowledge

      Socrates was over two millenia ago, we have made a little bit of progress since then. Most importantly, we have realized that there is a difference between not knowing everything, and knowing nothing at all. And we have dug a lot deeper into the nature of truth since Socrates and Plato and especially Aristotle. Granted, it's taken us almost 2000 years, but we finally arrived at non-Aristotelian logic, for example. We realize that whatever "truth" ultimately may be, even if we can not claim to know anything absolutely really for certain, some knowledge, such as physics or medicine, has obvious, visible, reliable and testable practical applications. And some knowledge, such as music, or ethics, has somewhat fuzzy, and not-quite-obvious, but still overal positive practical effects. And some knowledge, such as Voodoo, and Kabballa, and religion, simply doesn't.

      Nevertheless, we do apparently have a built-in desire for some kind of spirituality, be it religion or some replacement. There is a lot of very interesting research still to be done on the human mind. It just happens that the nonsense some barely literate desert dwellers wrote down twenty centuries ago isn't among it. It's a historical curiosity, like ancient greek physics.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    7. Re:Legally owns.... by Tom · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Religion is the reason we have universities and higher education today. You personally may choose to ignore the moral ideals of many religions, but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

      Well, this is /. and I'm not really writing a book, so some parts of my opinion are necessarily missing. I actually do believe that religion once served a useful role for the development of mankind. I disagree about the education part, especially given that one religion (Christianity) was a major factor in destroying what higher education the ancient world already had in place, but that's a minor point.

      The major point is that this time is long past, and these days (and for hundreds of years now), religion has been more of a burden than a help. It's time to get rid of it.

      He does have "use" of it, in the sense that it is a gift, and should not be wasted to damage yourself or others.

      If it is a gift, then it comes with no strings attached and I can do with it as I see fit. If there are strings attached, it isn't a gift, but something else, maybe a lease. Please make up your mind if you want to discuss this point.

      I studied to be a priest for 2 years, and we were required to take courses in logic. I would imagine most have not.
      Your attitude toward religion and logic are not logical.

      *nod*

      The amount of effort that the organized religions put into their foot soldiers is frightening. I know what priests learn during training. They are much better trained for speaking than many actual professions that require speaking skills.For example, teachers don't get nearly as much voice training, even though they speak all day, every day.

      My attitude toward religion isn't logical, but I can create an unbroken logical chain towards it, and reason and intuition have mutually reinforced each other over several years before I came to where I am today. I'm not saying "religion is evil" because I feel like doing so anymore than a physicist says "gravity exists" because he feels its pull - he certainly has that feeling, but it is only a tiny part of what actually constitutes his knowledge about gravity. So if you say that there is no physical reason to even research gravity, then you are certainly right. But that doesn't put gravity itself beyond reason.

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
    8. Re:Legally owns.... by Tom · · Score: 4, Funny

      FWIW, you can never have enough shoes, shoemaker or not.

      You're saying this god is a woman?

      --
      Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  2. No I read it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    My soul has been pissing me off.

    I mean for real, stop whining - I know - I'm slowly killing you with violent video games - give it a rest already.

  3. OSR (Obligatory Simpson's Reference) by bradgoodman · · Score: 3, Funny

    "I'll throw in my sense of decency for an extra $5 - It's a Bart sales bonanza, everything must go!"

  4. Make it readable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you want me to read it, make it readable.

    1. NO legalese
    2. One page maximum length

    Putting a 30 page wall of text full of legalese and word games does NOT constitute a useful document. I'm paying for a product, not to play lawyer.

    1. Re:Make it readable by Vohar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Funny thing about legal documents: It doesn't matter if you read them, understand them, whatever. Only that you sign them.

  5. Good Riddance by organgtool · · Score: 5, Funny

    If they can find a way to collect it they can have it

  6. Already Gone by MrTripps · · Score: 5, Funny

    I sold my soul to rock 'n roll a long time ago. Suckers!

    --
    "I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
  7. Back! Back, you 4-digiter! by Xaedalus · · Score: 3, Funny

    Return to the foul, eldtritch depths from whence you came, Beast from Beyond! The stars are not yet aligned and your time has not yet come! Back! Back I say! No Slashdot User IDs for you!

    --
    Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
    1. Re:Back! Back, you 4-digiter! by spun · · Score: 4, Funny

      AAAHhhhhhhhaaargh! Curse ye, I am foiled! I shall return to The Basement until my powers grow. You've not heard the last of me! *POOF* Cough, cough damn it, the package said these smoke bombs were non toxic.

      --
      - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  8. Re:Some folks will be REALLY offended by Tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Good. We're not here to amuse the remaining dumbos who have remained in the mental iron age.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  9. Not "idle" by Hurricane78 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is an important problem. And this was a really great way to highlight it. Huge props for Gamestop for doing this, instead of profiting from it.

    The real problem though, is not people not reading it. The problem is, that in practice it’s impossible to read all the terms of all the contracts.
    First they are deliberately written in undecipherable legal code. Something that should be illegal, but isn’t because it’s so hard to define.
    Then it’s way too much. You would have to read a multi-page small-font document, every time you pull out your wallet. (Yes, the terms can change in the two days between you going to the same shop to buy your food.)
    And finally, the whole thing is also deliberately made hard to access. How often did you go into a building with house rules, or signed a contract that mentioned them or some other external document, but they never handed them to you, and even acted annoyed and insulted, when you pointed it out, and demanded the document?

    It is 100% crystal clear that pretty much all companies do not want you to read any of it, for the very purpose of them biting you in the ass as soon as you trip over the tiniest irregularity. Or even without doing anything.

    Most contracts basically go like this:
    [big font] WE MAKE YOUR DREAM COME TRUE FOR FREE [/big font]
    [tiny font] There is some hidden document in the lower drawer in the basement of a building on the other side of the world, that is part of what you sign [tiny font]
    [hidden document] We give you NOTHING, but take from you EVERYTHING! [hidden document]

    And that is no different than mob tactics. In fact I say it out loud, and call every major corporation on this world a criminal mob with the sole purpose of making as much money as possible, even when it means walking over more dead bodies than the Nazis.
    Examples: Monsanto, Haliburton, Eli Lily, Shell, Elsevier.
    They all have private armies. They all have revolving doors with every big government. They all make huge profits with lies, death and deception. ...hell, Microsoft is a silly small fish in that area, when compared to those. But still way above the line of acceptable moral behavior.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  10. Contract law needs to be redone by gurps_npc · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Specifically, there has to be a requirement any contract that is NOT signed by a lawyer for the both sides as well as the participants, must:

    1. Be no more than 800 words (2 pages or so)

    2. Contain no latin or other legal terms that the average High School Graduate does not understand.

    If the contract is longer or uses other words, than non-lawyers can NOT be expected to understand them anymore than I could be expected to understand a page in French.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
  11. Re:I'm Really surprised... by tsalmark · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I also was very surprised by the high percentage of people reading the legalese, especially as the opt-out is not something you would notice with out reading the document. But I think we can assume the first person to read, opt-out and get a $5 coupon ran and told all the online game forums. Everyone else just [ctrl]-Fed themselves a coupon with out actually reading anything.