Use of Java in courses

Why would an elearning course ever require a specific version of Java to work properly? Another part of our company develops online courses that usually cause problems such as not recording completions and parts of the course just plain not working at all.  The most recent one I encountered has this as part of the item description in our LMS (Plateau v5.8)

**BEFORE YOU TAKE THIS COURSE, CONFIRM THAT YOU ARE USING JAVA 1.6.0.16 (AEP supported version). IF YOU HAVE A NEWER VERSION OF JAVA, THE COURSE MAY NOT MARK COMPLETE.**

The problem is we have a bunch of other business related apps that require a different version and constantly changing your java version is a major pain in the #$%! (Not to mention most people have no clue what this means nor how to do it.)

Could this related to the authoring tool they are using? (It's NOT Articulate unfortunately!) Do you think it's reasonable to ask them to stop doing this?

Thanks!

Mike