It is common for games to have small errors that need to be corrected, but it raises a little more attention when the error is referred to in the same language as war crimes.
The developer Innersloth recently shared an extraordinary story about the production of the game Among Us, which made a huge success in 2020.
Red Cross is protected
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The Red Cross symbol is actually a protected mark, to be used exclusively for emergency and actual medical services.
That is, for real, living people in the real, living world.
The protection in the Geneva Convention is in place so that medical services and emergency aid are safe, and are never used as a false cover or as human shields in war operations.
Digital representations of such services in games therefore do not have coverage to use it.
Equally, the symbol is often the immediate first choice precisely because it is so well-known and established, and is mistakenly assumed to be among free symbols in the public domain.
The problem was indeed an extremely small one, which many game developers and other productions have encountered before – and very few would think was a problem.
Innersloth used a red cross to indicate the infirmary on the map of the starship The Skeld.
The point is that the symbol is given special protection in the Geneva Convention.
After the publisher shared the story on Twitter there have been many responses from other developers who have stumbled into the same trap.
This is no worse than having to change the color of the cross – and players rarely even notice – but it can cause problems with approval for consoles. This suggests to Innersloth that was how they found out, too.
