You'd be forgiven for thinking Among Us launched in 2020 as that's when just about everyone started playing it. The hit game had actually been around for two years at that point, and while its renewed popularity during the pandemic was largely welcomed by Innersloth, it did also land them in hot water for violating the Geneva Conventions.Revealed via the Among Us Twitter account this week in the form of a “fun fact”, the team behind the game explained why the crosses in its MedBay changed colour once it took off. “We had to change the colour of the MedBay cross because we apparently violated the Geneva Conventions Act by making it red,” Innersloth explained. The red cross was changed to blue, and that's why.Only early adopters of Among Us that were paying very close attention would have even noticed the color change, and even those who did notice probably weren't all that bothered. It also turns out Among Us isn't the only game to have fallen foul of this. Mike Rose from indie studio No More Robots replied to the post, revealing it has failed to receive console certification on three different occasions for including a red cross in its games.
You might think a symbol as universally recognized as the red cross would be fair game for anyone to use, but that is definitely not the case. Used by various medical associations across the world, the website for the Canadian Red Cross explains, “Misuse of this valued symbol distorts its meaning and its protective value for victims of conflict and the aid workers that assist them.”
That explains why Among Us uses a blue cross instead of a red one, and also why the majority of games that include medkits make them red with a white cross rather than the other way around. If you do stumble upon a game with a red cross on its medkits or hospitals, either it doesn't know that's a big no-no, or it has been warned and it simply doesn't care.