This has got to be one of the weirdest gaming stories I've ever seen!

"Days before Christmas, Delay and Morris received a concerning email from the British Red Cross.

"My immediate reason for writing is that it has been brought to our attention that in your game ‘Prison Architect’ a red cross emblem is displayed on vehicles," it reads. "Those responsible may be unaware that use of the red cross emblem is restricted under the Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims of 12 August 1949, and that unauthorised use of this sign in the United Kingdom is an offence under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957.""

Apparently this isn't even the first time some game has had to change files because of this.
The youtube clip is definitely worth watching.

It's nothing new unfortunately. Doom had to change the symbol in the BFG release of Doom 1 & 2 (I believe also in the Game Boy Advance versions), but so much more than games have been using the symbol in an "unauthorised" fashion. There are toy ambulances out there that carry the symbol, nurse costumes (not actual professional costumes, but for fancy dress or similar), first aid kits and much more, none of which are "authorised" under the Geneva Convention.

I would say the Red Cross took their sweet time chasing this up, and are unnecessarily pissing off many people just on the basis of some vague intellectual property claim and in the name of supposed safety by penalising the use of what has become essentially a genericised symbol.

That sounds pretty serious, the designers of that game should be sent to The Hague and face justice for their crimes against humanity.

The interview with the devs is a good read. I think Prison Architect got singled out because it's a controversial game, the same thing happens in tons of other games, movies, comic books, etc. Perfectly within their right, but still kind of douche.

I can kind of get the importance of the symbol, but it does seem a little pointless in this context to persecute someone like Introversion for this.

I had no idea it was a protected symbol (though thinking about it Green Crosses are probably more common on First Aid and other similar items)

There goes Switzerland's plans to invert their flag.

And I'm playing Half-Life right now and there are red cross symbols all over the place.

Hey, tinyE, congratulations on breaking the minus bar. You're going steadily down every day.

I had to shut off my PM because the guy doing it to me keeps spamming me with congratulations of his own.

Yikes. That guy really hates you, huh.

Oh well, it sucks that it's going on, but what can you do.

They were cherry picking wtf.

"offense of Geneva conf."

Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh rightttttttttttttttttt pick the right guys to attack probably? Bunch of those AAA publishers perhaps?

Yeah, this has been happening for a long time. It's one of the things that had to be removed when Nintendo localized Earthbound, for example, though why it was fine in the original JP release is beyond me.

Seems like one of those weird things that the industry's just had to deal with, like how companies couldn't have minigames on loading screens until the end of 2015 because of a patent.

This headline will travel far and wide because people won't understand what it means. And ofc no-one writing articles are going to put descriptive headlines in. The actual harm done by this is minimal, but ''broke the Geneva Convention'' ought to bring in some confused people. Kinda sad to see them go through this shit after the gender roles controversy.

Sigh, are people competing on how to make the most ridiculous copyright claim.

I just posted that in another thread.

You'll be hearing from my lawyers.

It just seems like such a ridiculous thing to do, stopping the use of it in a game, where none of it is based on anything real. Hell, I always think of that symbol as a healing potion/box or similar.

But this to me is just as dumb as blocking certain games/films etc in Germany, especially when they allow the sale of Mein Kampf.

I play games where I go around killing or being killed, doesn't mean I'm going to turn into a murder (well, not because of games anyway ;p).
I play games where I explore, yet you don't catch me at the North pole.
Ooh, better remove that Red Cross logo from the game, or next thing I'll start driving ambulances & helping the seriously injured ;p