The game Among Us — which features little guys in spacesuits trying to complete tasks before an imposter kills their team — might have accidentally violated the Geneva Convention.
The game’s developer, Innersloth, dropped a “fun fact” on Twitter, explaining how the viral game might have run afoul of the Geneva Conventions Act. Apparently, it had something to do with the color they chose to make the medical sign on the game’s white MedBay doors.
“Fun fact: after the game got big in 2020 we had to change the colour of the MedBay cross,” they tweeted, “because we apparently violated the Geneva Conventions Act by making it red????”
They cheekily added, “oops.”
For those in need of a brief history lesson, the Geneva Convention restricted the use of the Red Cross symbol on a white background in 1949. The International Committee of the Red Cross states that the image is protected under international law and that unauthorized use is prohibited.
Part of the reasoning is that using the Red Cross symbol outside of war zones could trivialize its meaning.
So, in theory, every game that uses a red cross on a white background, such as on a health kit, door or vehicle, goes against the Geneva Convention.
And since the Among Us developers didn’t want to technically be war criminals, they patched the game so that the red crosses on the MedBay doors are now blue.