I agree with you -- if there's a process and it's easy enough to get an approval, I (personally) have no problems.

However, Amazon's game development policy lays out 10ish different requirements you must meet, including not working with others outside of your org, must give up ownership of IP at Amazon's request, must use Amazon services or provide feedback why you couldn't. There's no process by which any of those items can be waived.

This basically means you can't do game jams with friends unless they work in your org. And if your game jam is successful, you run the risk of Amazon just taking ownership.

Yeah, that's not OK. That's not like any policy I've seen anywhere.

This is not an accurate representation of Amazon's current policies.

The problem is that you need permission. Whether the approval is usually given is irrelevant, what matters is whether they have the option to refuse.

Think about it like this: What would be the problem with the employment contract saying that salary can be decided by the company at will if they usually paid a certain acceptable sum every month?

I tried to distinguish "shall issue" from "may issue". A "you must let us know [so we can possibly refuse]" policy and a "you must ask permission [that will issue if there is no conflict]" policy are indistinguishable. A "you must ask permission and we reserve the right to say no no matter what" policy is terrible, and I'd not work under such a policy.

But the point is that it's not a question of probabilities, but of whether they are contractually obligated to issue approval unless specific conditions are met, so an implicit "[that will issue if there is no conflict]" is not acceptable IMO. There have to be specific rules for when they may refuse approval, so you can ask an independent judge to make a decision if you think the employer is partial in its decision.

"shall issue" and "may issue" are terms of art.