Amazon Covers Zombie Apocalypse Clause In Its Lumberyard Terms Of Service
Amazon has released a new free game engine and development tool called Lumberyard with visual technology that lets developers utilize the company’s massive data centers to aid in game development. However, the only catch here is that games created with this engine cannot read or write data to competing cloud services.
Based on core components of Crytek’s CryEngine, Lumberyard will support development for PCs and consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4). Amazon plans to add support for mobile devices and virtual reality gear soon.
The game engine, which is available in a beta build, is free of charge, and there is neither a subscription fee nor revenue-sharing model to bar entry to small development teams.
Lumberyard also will grant developers access to its source code and allow them to redistribute it to modders. However, Amazon is reserving its rights to Lumberyard’s core, so it isn’t open source.
On Monday, Amazon updated its terms of service including stipulations about Lumberyard use (Section 57). The company’s new Lumberyard Materials video game development engine includes a special “zombie clause”, which will allow you to use the program to defend yourself against the undead hoard, somehow, reports The Guardian.
The terms of service typically prohibit the use of the development tools “with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat.” In short, Lumberyard is meant to be a video game development platform, not something for creating, testing or using with real-world situations or critical systems. But clause 57.10 makes the following exception:
“However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization.”
The clause was first noticed and shared on Twitter by writer and podcaster, Diane Patterson and the tweet has since been retweeted thousands of times.
In the end, it is up to you to decide the chances of that actually happening, and if it does, you can use Lumberyard for whatever you please when there’s a zombie apocalypse!
