Preface: This post is an edited version of a hobby scuffles post I made a week ago. I can’t say I know enough about the Red Cross emblem history to be able to write up about every case of the Red Cross protesting inappropriate usage, so this will focus only on its relation to gaming. I’ll also be using the term “red cross” in lowercase to reference the emblem of the red cross and not the international organization. A little background on the Red Cross below taken or paraphrased from various sources, skip the next 3 paragraphs if you don’t need the info, or straight to the tl;dr at the very bottom.
Red Cross background
Quoted from wikipedia:
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering. Within it there are three distinct organisations that are legally independent from each other, but are united within the movement through common basic principles, objectives, symbols, statutes and governing organisations.
The laws regulating use of the red cross has changed over time. During World War 2 use of the emblem didn’t necessarily mean direct association with the Red Cross, but represented that they were unarmed neutral medics. Many of us have seen movies and games of World War 2 medics running around the battlefield with a big white and red cross emblem on their helmets and armbands- if you also saw them carrying or using a weapon though, that’s a big no-no. In 1949 the first Geneva Conventions established recognition of the Red Cross/Red Crescent as a neutral unarmed aid party. Full pdf document: https://www.redcross.org/content/dam/redcross/atg/PDF_s/International_Services/International_Humanitarian_Law/IHL_SummaryGenevaConv.pdf
Rightfully so, the International Red Cross has been more insistent on protecting its Red Cross emblem to represent the neutral aid organization that they are, and not let it get diluted by being used to represent medicine/first aid in general. It was even sued by Johnson & Johnson, who tried to claim the red cross merely represents first aid in commercial settings and that the Red Cross shouldn’t be selling red cross marked first aid kits (both parties settled, Johnson & Johnson still gets to use the emblem on their commercial first aid products, but it didn’t push further due to bad optics). In war, it’s considered a warcrime to use the red cross emblem when one is armed or not truly neutral. And the Red Cross has been requesting that all forms of media from gaming, TV, movies, comics, whatever else, even private hospitals and ambulances not directly associated with the Red Cross, remove the red cross usage if it does not represent them. Fresh hot debates within gaming communities flare up again whenever a game updates their medical items to not use the red cross symbology.
Red Cross background ends here.
Red Cross = Healing?
If you’re an older gamer, chances are if you saw an object in game with a red cross on it, it’s guaranteed to have meant “HEALING HERE!!!” The emblem was used to indicate almost any sort of medical location or supplies for healing a character. PC games as old as Wolfenstein 3d (1992) featured white medkits with red crosses on them (someone correct me if they know of any older games). I personally grew up on Valve FPS games like the Half-Life series, and just from that it had been ingrained in me to think of “healing” whenever I see a red cross in game. Almost every gamer can tell you they recognize that you get healing from things with a red cross on it, as simple logic as instinctively knowing red barrels explode and enemies’ glowing bits are weakpoints.
But the association of red cross = healing can’t be a bad thing right? Surely, we want kids growing up to know red cross is good because it means heals? Well, if in a game you see an enemy with a red cross on them, do you let them do their neutral party thing and heal other enemies? Hell no, you know you shoot them first! Technically it’s okay to do so if they are armed, but portraying armed medics with a red cross in a game is also problematic. But in either case, I don’t know of any game which actively penalizes you for shooting medics, whether unarmed or not. Sometimes it ends up being a bonus to you if you get to heal from stealing their supplies. Or in survival type games, you see a hospital, truck, or tent with a red cross? You raid it for first aid of course! You should be able to see a pattern problem with this emblem association at this point.
No, Red Cross ≠ Healing.
The first game to be called out and cause more high profile discussion appears to be Prison Architect, whose devs were threatened with a lawsuit in 2017 for misuse of the red cross emblem and forced to remove the red cross from their game spurring other games later to make the change as well. Clarification edit: The threat was specifically from the British Red Cross due to their Geneva Conventions Act of 1957, they did not actually get sued, they complied and replaced all instances of the red cross. Fans of this game and gamers in general weren’t happy there about it at all, accusing the Red Cross of being a large bureaucratic organization bullying a poor indie dev.
This paragraph below was added after commenters informed me of other earlier games that had their red crosses changed.
Prior to Prison Architect being threatened, there had been other developers that had been asked to remove red crosses from their games or willingly did so when updating, but they don’t seem to have garnered as much publicity. As some commenters have pointed out, Japanese games localized in the US in the 90s had been requested by the American Red Cross to replace their red crosses (most commonly with a red H), Neverwinter was requested by the Canadian Red Cross in 2012 (which did cause some forum discussions, unfortunately actual original source links no longer work), and DOOMs’ 2016 ports had replaced them quietly. But gaming site articles and reddit discussions on the fact that games can no longer use the red cross appear to pop up the most from 2017 and afterwards- see PC Gamer and Kotaku articles.
This was hotly debated in r/gamedev in a thread 6 years ago where many were upset at this lawsuit threat for use of what many considered a universal generic symbol. Many level-headed voices explain the situation much better than me. I thought this comment was most helpful in explaining it all. But it’s interesting to note many other comments claiming the Red Cross had failed to previously protect their emblem from other games and has no right to impose it now. Some commenters even claim the Red Cross is acting like a patent troll bullying smaller companies instead of going after larger ones. Or commenters saying gaming devs should ignore this lawsuit to spite the Red Cross, or to find other loopholes of using it, making light of the Geneva Conventions in general. It doesn’t help that a lot of older games and media still use the emblem to represent medics/hospitals and were never changed, so a lot of people see it as inconsistent hypocrisy. Notable modern-ish (but still old) games that get pointed out often for still featuring it include Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead.
This 2017 lawsuit threat appears to be the biggest catalyst for gaming companies suddenly updating their first aid/healing location symbols to be other colors, shapes, and designs. Most commonly another color, usually a green cross, or just simply reverse the red and white for a Swiss flag (irony being the Red Cross was a reversed Swiss flag to begin with).
The entire reason I dug into this was because earlier this year Deep Rock Galactic, a game which I enjoy and follow, updated their medical bay to use a green cross instead of a red cross. I was surprised by the reason, and more surprised by the player backlash. Some players were not happy with this change, though in the developers’ and Red Cross’, defense, this change was done because the game recently was ported to PlayStation, and Sony has a requirement for games on their platform to not use the Red Cross emblem. The developers of this game confirmed they did this change voluntarily and were not specifically requested or threatened to change by the Red Cross or by Sony. But a lot of players still do not accept this answer, or do not read, and are practically blaming the Red Cross for ruining their gaming experience by removing beloved video game healing iconography.
Other cases
Other recent examples of this happening pointed out in my hobbyscuffles post include Stardew Valley, who made a tongue in cheek comment of “Fixed a Gevena Convention violation” in their patch notes when they changed their clinic to use a cyan cross. A non gaming example pointed out to me in my hobbyscuffles post includes a Transformers character design and comics I’m sure many of you who follow other media might know more cases, and I’d love to see them in the comments.
TL;DR: The Red Cross’ red cross emblem is an internationally recognized and protected symbol, and it has been enforcing that. A game developer was threatened with a lawsuit in 2017 over this. Gamers are not happy their healing items/places no longer can use red crosses. New games now that feature healing uses other colors/symbols similar to but not identical to a red cross.