An enterprising Lost Ark player explored the Amazon Game’s Terms of Service and discovered that the Western launch of the game has some strange provisions that basically state that only “live humans” may play the game and bar extraterrestrials from playing the game.
Twitch partner MiltonTPik1 tweeted, having found it in Section 5.1 of the Lost Ark ToS, which is actually part of the Amazon Game’s ToS, that is basically a convoluted way of saying that Amazon frowns on botting.
“To enter this Agreement and use the Games, you must be a live human (e.g., not a corporation, organization, artificial intelligence (good or evil), extraterrestrial, sentient non-human primate, etc.),” the agreement reads.
However, it continues that should an alien force overcome the world in a widespread invasion this section would accept the new world government and suddenly this would be okay:
“However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence of a widespread extraterrestrial, robot, simian, or similar takeover of planet Earth, in which case we welcome our alien, robot, ape, or other overlords, as applicable, (such parties, “Their Eminences”) to play our Games, and Their Eminences will be subject to the terms of this Agreement, mutatis mutandis, commencing on the date of the takeover and continuing for all periods thereafter, until such date as human governance is restored.”
Of course, Amazon also mentions that if humanity were forced to migrate to Mars, asteroid colonies, or other galaxies the company would then have to build cloud servers there in order to serve the game in those regions as well (and would have to abide by the laws and regulations of regions thereby).
Ordinarily, this sort of whimsical section of a ToS is the mainstay of more indie developers. The last time our writers have seen this sort of commentary has been in very old anti-piracy statements. One hilarious game developer threatened to curse our souls to eternal damnation if we copied the game without payment (of course we paid for it: always support indie developers).
It is not common for cold, corporate overlords like Amazon to show this sort of quirky easter egg hidden in what would otherwise be dry and boring boilerplate legalese.
Of course, it also got exactly what they were likely looking for, a little bit of extra press for a game that’s already getting some attention in the MMORPG industry.
Image: Smilegate
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