Amazon's new game engine includes a zombie attack clause

Restrictions for the company’s game engine, Lumberyard, will not apply when an infection ‘causes human corpses to reanimate’

(AFP/Getty Images)

One of Amazon’s online web services include exemptions that allow it to be used in the event of a zombie attack.

The company announced its new game engine, Lumberyard, yesterday. The tool is free for developers to use and will help them create their own games, so long as they buy cloud services for the games through Amazon.

But developers are banned from using Lumberyard in a range of different situations.

That includes “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”. The Lumberyard Materials can also only be used in line with the company’s acceptable use policy.

But that restriction is waived in the event that the US Centers for Disease Control says that there has been a zombie outbreak.

The rules will be lifted if there is an occurrence “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”.

Amazon doesn’t give any details about how exactly the gaming system could be integrated with spacecraft or live combat systems.

Diane Patterson, who first pointed out the exemption, said that it might show that “Amazon knows something we don’t”.