Online game shoppers duped into selling souls
British retailer GameStation claims it now owns 7,500 souls after inserting a clause into its sales contracts with online shoppers.
“By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non-transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions.”
Psyk60: They did, but not anymore. GameStation no longer exists. It was bought out by competitor Game, then shut down when Game ran into financially difficulties.
plant_king: Its possible that people did read it and thought it was worth it
Sevarra: The problem with these jokes in T&Cs is that – you either accept or you don’t get what you want. So why should I read 20 pages of tiny print if I don’t have the option to check and uncheck what I agree to and to negotiate the whole contract?
the_undad_10: Pleeeease. I sold my soul for a cookie when I was a kid.
wsxc8523: But i already owe my soul to the company store[.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTCen9-RELM)
DrCabbageman: As I recall the terms specifically mentioned that you’d get a fiver in return for your soul and so a bunch of people who read them went in and asked for their fiver.
NapClub: jokes on them, gamers don’t have souls!
maico3010: Given that it would take several years to read through the amount of T&C/TOS most people agree to in a single year, wouldn’t it make sense that companies have to provide a short simplified version of their T&C/TOS for a quick read, that way if we have questions about a specific clause we can notice it quickly and be able to go into the detailed T&C/TOS to read more about it.
weeowey: I’m suing.
spoodie: Or it shows that T&C are a dumb system that doesn’t work.
paulusmagintie: Jokes on them, I am a red head, no soul to be found.
Revenge_of_the_User: Joke’s on them; a classmate lost my soul in a poker match one night in a winter cabin. One of my other classmates has it now.
RalfHorris: The buying out and subsequent closing of Gamestation by Game was probably the worst thing that happened to high street gaming in the UK.
The direct competition caused both of them to keep their prices in check and they competed in trade in value as well, with Gamestation generally coming out on top. The amount of extra money you got was considerable in comparison to today. Gamestation tended to have a lot more retro stuff as well.
I remember the local shopping centre having both these shops and a Woolworths all within a minutes walk of each other, sometimes you could see the prices dropping during a single days trading as they knocked money off to compete.
I remember picking up the steelbook edition of Bioshock (was that really almost a decade ago!!) on release for £35, nowadays a AAA hyped up release like that would probably cost you £55 in Game.
Just_Relax_and_Chill: As an attorney let me explain the deviousness of terms and conditions. At the point of sale for a simple product, it is incredibly inconvenient to read a 75 page contract on a small screen and the companies know this.
Additionally, the contracts are.being issued in a “boiler plate” fashion. This means they very heavily support one side and are unnegotiable.
A fellow attorney of mine who works in a company that represents apple once gave me a fact that absolutely shocked me. He asked me if I would guess what percentage of the hundreds of millions of Apple users read all the way through the terms and conditions on their phones when updating iOS. I guess 1, 2 maybe 5%.
He told me that over a six-month. The number of people that read through the entire terms and conditions for the upgraded software was exactly 0%. And mind you there are hundreds of thousands of attorneys who have iPhones, myself included. Terms and conditions as a policy in contract law maybe something that is Revisited by a court in the near future. This is especially true with the Advent of mass program updates on devices that nearly everyone uses.
LordBrook: Is Gamestation gone now? We used to have one in our town but it’s looooong gone.
slurpee_clerk: But, you can earn it back just as soon as you beat Dark Souls 3 without dying
ryannefromTX: If anything, this is a pretty strong indictment of T&Cs and a sign that their legality should be challenged.
fzw: Terms and conditions are practically designed so that people won’t read them. They’re dense with unnecessary legalese that should be written much more clearly if the average person is expected to read it before accepting, especially if it’s for something small like a computer game.
Sno_Jon: T&Cs are bull shit and there’s should be some regulation around them.
They throw in a load of bull shit long text hiding key things in the middle to screw toy over
IronicMetamodernism: That’s pretty good going. I’ve only managed to buy three.
Asking someone who claims to be a total atheist to sell you their soul starts some interesting conversations. But most won’t do it.
urfriendosvendo: This article is from 2010. I was 23 and happy then.
Hazzamo: the best thing about gamestation was that, when i traded in about 10 games a few years ago, i got about £70 for the lot… (this was when GAME was almost bankrupt)