{"id":89,"date":"2010-04-23T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html"},"modified":"2010-04-23T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T15:00:00","slug":"fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html","title":{"rendered":"Fun Friday, Part II: Players Tricked Into Selling Their Souls for Online Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Along with <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-part-i-in-south-park-defense-jon-stewart-recaps-daily-show-religious-mockery.html\">last night&#8217;s Jon Stewart\/South Park segment<\/a>, the most entertaining religion news item of the past week came out of an April Fool&#8217;s Prank played by GameStation, a British online gaming store that buried an &#8220;immortal soul clause&#8221; in the site&#8217;s terms and conditions. Apparently, this resulted in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2010\/04\/17\/gamestation-grabs-souls-o_n_541549.html\">the voluntary surrender of about 7,500 souls.<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Hmmm. Guess the devil really IS in the details.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.torontosun.com\/news\/world\/2010\/04\/19\/13635636-qmi.html\">the company nullified its claims to the souls <\/a>after proving its point: hardly anyone ever reads the terms of service language before downloading or buying anything online.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>subscribe to Belief Beat<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hulu.com\/watch\/23459\/the-simpsons-donut-hell\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>surrender your immortal soul<\/strong><\/a> and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Along with last night&#8217;s Jon Stewart\/South Park segment, the most entertaining religion news item of the past week came out of an April Fool&#8217;s Prank played by GameStation, a British online gaming store that buried an &#8220;immortal soul clause&#8221; in the site&#8217;s terms and conditions. Apparently, this resulted in the voluntary surrender of about 7,500&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Fun Friday, Part II: Players Tricked Into Selling Their Souls for Online Games - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fun Friday, Part II: Players Tricked Into Selling Their Souls for Online Games - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Along with last night&#8217;s Jon Stewart\/South Park segment, the most entertaining religion news item of the past week came out of an April Fool&#8217;s Prank played by GameStation, a British online gaming store that buried an &#8220;immortal soul clause&#8221; in the site&#8217;s terms and conditions. Apparently, this resulted in the voluntary surrender of about 7,500&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-23T15:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Fun Friday, Part II: Players Tricked Into Selling Their Souls for Online Games - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Fun Friday, Part II: Players Tricked Into Selling Their Souls for Online Games - Belief Beat","og_description":"Along with last night&#8217;s Jon Stewart\/South Park segment, the most entertaining religion news item of the past week came out of an April Fool&#8217;s Prank played by GameStation, a British online gaming store that buried an &#8220;immortal soul clause&#8221; in the site&#8217;s terms and conditions. Apparently, this resulted in the voluntary surrender of about 7,500&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2010-04-23T15:00:00+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html","name":"Fun Friday, Part II: Players Tricked Into Selling Their Souls for Online Games - Belief Beat","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-23T15:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-23T15:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/fun-friday-video-game-players-unwittingly-sold-their-souls-to-british-company.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Fun Friday, Part II: Players Tricked Into Selling Their Souls for Online Games"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/","name":"Belief Beat","description":"BeliefBeat - Nicole Neroulias","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b","name":"Nicole Neroulias","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","caption":"Nicole Neroulias"},"description":"Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously written for The New York Times and other media outlets. She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}