Quote Originally Posted by steinulfr View Post
I have to disagree with you on this. For a devil, screwing you over is profit. First, souls are currency in the lower planes. Taking yours is, therefore, literally a direct profit. Second, getting screwed makes you desperate, and desperate people are good for a devil's business. If you're desperate you're more likely to want to make more deals, and you're more likely to make deals that you know are rigged against you. Sure, the game is rigged, but it's the only game in town, and if you're desperate and under time pressure you might make that deal even though you know it'll bite you in the end.

Third, and maybe most importantly, you're assuming that you will know the devil ripped you off, or went behind your back to pull the kinds of underhanded exploitative moves I've discussed thus far. That's a fallacious assumption. If the devil's doing its job right, you'll keep going back for more, and never even realize that most of the problems you're asking for its help surviving are actually its fault to begin with. The devil can move things around behind the scenes and ensure that you're always in a bad situation where you need to keep making bargains to survive, without you ever knowing that it was involved. So if you offer it a deal where it gets more profit by not working against you, it'll smile and agree and then find some way to continue hurting you so that you'll keep coming back for more. It gets the benefits of your reward since you don't know that it isn't keeping the spirit of the bargain, and it gets the direct profit and continued relationship it wants. This is what devils do. They're good at it.
And you keep assuming that in case of a problem, the best possible solution is to go to the very devil most likely responsible for the additional trouble. That's the thing: there is more then one power- and soul-hungry entity willing to buy things from you. It's not the only game in town at all. The whole incentive assumes you don't care, if the devil in question was the one to spill the beans. Once the secret is out, possible future sales are also out.

Additionaly, I can make an argument that by making the deal short and simple, you are giving the devil free pass to screw you over in whatever way he (or she) sees fit, since there is no contract prohibiting him from doing so. Even more: a devil can screw you over even if you didn't do a deal with him at all, because why not? There is nothing preventing them from being proactive in soul aquisition.

Yes, you'll lose in the end whatever you do - I fully agree with that. It's just that I don't agree with the notion that a short deal would prevent or discourage the devil from actively working to undermine you. They don't need contracts for that.