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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."

11 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 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
    3. 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. 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.

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

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

  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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.

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com