Online game shoppers duped into selling souls
I first sold my soul to a girl with a very large gap in her teeth. It took me years to get it back. (Yes, souls are recoverable.) But then I met a former trapeze artist from a Hungarian circus. The rest, as they say, is misery.
So I feel a peculiar and vigorous bond with the 7,500 people who, so mesmerized by the idea of buying a video game, sold their souls to the UK gaming retailer GameStation.
You might think I am making this up. You might think that no one can buy someone else's soul. At least, not legally. Well, please check your own soul compartment, just in case you might have inadvertently sold its contents while ordering up a new Xbox 360.
According to Fox News, you see, GameStation decided to slip a clause into the terms and conditions of its purchase contracts that gave the company the rights to your immortal being.
The clause makes for stimulating reading: "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."
The retailer reportedly began this clause as an April Fool's joke, but then developed it in order to prove to itself, the world, and the heated inhabitants of Haedes that no one reads these often draconian draftings. … Read more