Amazon Will Void Its Terms of Service If the Zombies Come

Your eyes may usually glaze over while reading companies' terms of service, but a paragraph buried in the ToS for Amazon's newly released game engine is worthy of your attention, CNNMoney reports. Lumberyard's beta version dropped Tuesday, and the company frames its purpose like so: "Whether you are a major studio, an indie developer, a student, or a hobbyist, Lumberyard provides a growing set of tools to create the highest-quality games" and intersects with Amazon's cloud services (aka AWS) and its streaming video-game platform, Twitch. Scroll down past the legalese to Section 57.10 of the AWS ToS, updated Monday to cover Lumberyard, and you'll first see a standard-looking warning.

The "Acceptable Use" language instructs users that Lumberyard isn't to be used with "life-critical or safety-critical systems" such as operating medical equipment or driverless cars. But there's an exception to that clause, and it gives users a pass if there are zombies afoot—a playful move that VentureBeat notes could "actually be good for business." "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." Noted. (If you want to be safe from zombies, go here.)