7,500 Online Shoppers Accidentally Sold Their Souls To Gamestation

April Fool's 2010 saw some pretty clever online pranks. Google, for instance, changed its name to Topeka for the entirety of April First. This came in response to a stunt by Topeka, KS, which temporarily changed its name to 'Google' in a bid to win Google's ultra-fast broadband.

But one prank, so unique in its maleficence, distinguishes itself. The devious prank, pulled by GameStation, an online gaming store, resulted in the voluntary surrender of 7,500 souls.

The soul-snatching was made possible through what Switched calls the "immortal soul clause" buried in the site's terms and conditions. The clause, as published by GameStation, reads,

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 authorized minions.

Fox News commented on the poignancy of the prank: "[N]o one reads the online terms and conditions of shopping, and companies are free to insert whatever language they want into the documents."

Indeed, only 12 percent of purchasers noticed the ruse, news:lite reports. GameStation even included a hyper-linked option that read "click here to nullify your soul transfer" and rewarded astute shoppers with a coupon worth 5 GBP. Nevertheless, 88 percent of the day's transactions included human souls.

Now that April Fool's Day has passed, the benevolent GameStation has nullified all claims to their customers' souls.

Rest easy, gamers. (via Switched)

Comments

[JulieDole]

05:15 PM on 04/21/2010

So wait, if the souls are returns, will they show up as refurbished souls on Ebay?

[booboopickle]

10:04 AM on 04/20/2010

the sad part is that people will believe anything

[MeinNH]

09:53 AM on 04/20/2010

Read before you click folks....just sayin'

[lockDown]

01:32 AM on 04/20/2010

Oh, Steve Jobs. Don't you have enough disciples?

[A Flock Of Budgies]

01:39 AM on 04/20/2010

Not even funny.

[Lohikaarme]

08:17 AM on 04/20/2010

Thanks for unmasking Steve Jobs, what a devil he is.

[MrGman]

08:01 PM on 04/19/2010

I sold my soul a long time ago, so if I made that purchase..... would I be rejected, guilty of fraud? Oh we soulless people don't really care about the legality of contracts anyway. What's nice about being a soulless person? We write those terms and conditions....

[MountPanic]

07:57 PM on 04/19/2010

Pfft, companies have been putting this in their employment contracts for years.

[PenguinLinux]

07:02 PM on 04/19/2010

Did all of you who run Windows and Mac OS X read your EULAs -- and even more importantly -- Did you understand them??

GPLv2 all the way!!!! Go Linux!!

[CRMurray]

03:54 PM on 04/19/2010

What if a red head made a purchase? We all know gingers don't have souls.

[Six26]

07:00 PM on 04/19/2010

HAHAHA!!

[autumnfire1957]

01:35 PM on 04/19/2010

No one reads Terms and conditions. We all just click through. Who knows what we've really agreed to.

[rjmiller]

01:32 PM on 04/19/2010

This is more important as commentary on the supposed legality of click-thru licenses and other forms of non-negotiated agreements. Of course, we can always fight back with this:

READ CAREFULLY. By reading this blog post, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

[RTIII]

01:29 PM on 04/19/2010

This actually _is_ important.

It may play a role someday in shaping electronic contract law.

If nothing else, it's easy proof that you can put just about anything in a contract and get away with it.

By proving that a huge fraction of people don't read online contracts, one can hope that there may someday be a case which somehow manages to get such things fairly well standardized - call it the Online User's Bill Of Rights - in short, the right not to be confronted with a five thousand word contract, wherein just about anything may be lurking, just in order to buy a four dollar item. The maximum length of a contract might someday be linked to the dollar value of the transaction - the greater the value, the longer the contract may be...

Note, however, that people who sign a contract they did not read can hardly be expected to honor any of its terms.

I recently suffered a LENGTHY contract negotiation process between my company, as vendor, and another. In the end, they violated the terms of the contract not less than five times in less than two weeks. We aren't going to be doing business with them on those terms ever again - maybe under any terms. However, my point is that even when you DO go carefully over a contract, it says nothing, unfortunately, about whether the other party will honor their agreement.

...I suppose those who signed could just refuse to give up

[AlphaDragon]

01:49 PM on 04/19/2010

You may be able to get away with writing anything in the contract, but it has yet to be proven that you can enforce everything in the contract.

Still, I agree there is cause for concern.

[JulieDole]

05:13 PM on 04/21/2010

Well, illegal contracts are not enforceable. In the US anyway.

[TotalRecall9]

01:23 PM on 04/19/2010

That is just wrong!

[77bravo]

01:20 PM on 04/19/2010

This is soo not cool.

[KenMoore]

01:17 PM on 04/19/2010

Ha! Fooled them! My ex-wife got my soul in the divorce settlement! (she had a REALLY good lawyer)

[JulieDole]

05:13 PM on 04/21/2010

LOL!

[behindEnemyLines]

01:10 PM on 04/19/2010

Ha, next year they should actually send out the notifications to the 7500 people. lol

[JulieDole]

12:14 AM on 04/20/2010

Right?! LOL!