Every videogame has an EULA—End User License Agreement—and nobody reads them. And before you leap into the comments to expound on the unflinching attention you pay to the fine print, yes, I know that some people do give them the once-over before clicking the button that allows the action to proceed. But it's a tiny portion of the gamer population who bothers with them. I certainly don't. And because of that, I, along with just about everyone else, missed out on a little something being cooked up by Divinity: Original Sin developer Larian Studios.
Larian revealed today that it performed "a little experiment" with the Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition EULA, just to see if anyone read it. "Our EULA on Steam included the following phrase: '16. Special Consideration. A special consideration in material or immaterial form may be awarded to the first 100 authorized licensees to actually read this section of the EULA and contact LARIAN STUDIOS at info@larian.com. This offer can be withdrawn by LARIAN STUDIOS at any time.'," it wrote on Facebook.
"We're telling you now because the results are in and it turns out that you in fact do read these things. Our lawyer feels good about this," it continued. Unfortunately, there's no indication what the "special consideration" offered to those who were paying attention might be, or if it even exists at all: It may well be one of those amusing ideas that doesn't quite get the full follow-through it deserves.
Either way, it has since been withdrawn, and section 16 of the EULA now reads, "Miscellaneous. Nothing herein shall be deemed to supersede or derogate from LARIAN STUDIOS's remedies at law," yadda yadda booboo—the sort of mind-numbing lawyerspeak that keeps people from reading EULAs in the first place, in other words.
It's not the first time that someone has decided to have some fun with a license agreement—remember when Gamestation collected 7500 immortal souls from its customers?—but more often than not, that fine print is more likely to to bite you in the ass than to tickle your funny-bone.