This competition to 'win' a 30k job playing games for a year is really weird

(Image credit: OPSYS)

Here's something a little out there that's come floating by my desk today. OPSYS, a recently founded gaming PC system builder (and one that I'd never heard of prior) is offering one person the chance to run the company's 'Overpowered User Experience' department for £30,000 a year as its one and only 'gamer.' You don't have to do anything, just play games on one of the company's PCs that it provides you. The catch? Well, it's all rather odd.

First off, the company is brand new. With only a handful of reviews to go off, it's difficult to discern just what you will be getting yourself into. You'd think a company fresh off the bat would struggle to raise the funds required for a £30,000 per year made-up position but here we are. So I'm immediately wary of what's in store.

Then there's the 'job ad', that's difficult to parse for all the gamer speak. Don't take that personally, most of us have moved on, but some legacies clearly live on. Here are a couple of excerpts from the Notes and Caveats section of the 'job posting':

"No trolls. We're looking for a serious gamer who spends more time in the games themselves than the comments sections of more serious gamers. Just regular old-fashioned, parent-rejected, bloodshot and unrelenting gamers, please."

"No Clans. Look, we all like to party. But we're looking for a soloist. So please don't show up with your hot twin and think it's gonna sway us into making this some sort of freakydeaky team thing."

If that wasn't strange enough, there's also a small poem on the OPSYS about page.

I don't know, there's just something about this entire OPSYS job posting that we're not 100 percent sure about. But we can't help but think: "What if?"

What if it really were a legitimate competition? That this company with a thoroughly outmoded concept of gamers were actually going to hand out £30,000 to someone to do absolutely nothing for a year besides play some games on an OPSYS PC from the comfort of their own home?

And what does it get out of this strange competition otherwise. As far as publicity stunts go, I suppose it's caught our attention... but I really don't know what to say about this one.

I personally wouldn't sign up for it just because I'm a cautious type, and so I can't in good conscience recommend you do either. If you go ahead and sign up and win a £30k a year salary for jack-all then fair play. Life is all one big risk, I suppose. Here are the entry requirements, do what you want.

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.