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Red Cross Health Icon Appreciation Thread
- Thread starter Breadbassket
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European devs should use the appropriate substitute:
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Can't believe Stardew Valley violated the Geneva Convention.
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IT'S NOT A WARCRIME (unless you are a uniformed combatant) IT'S JUST COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT REEEEEEEE
W'rkncacnter
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Is there a list of games that cucked out to the red cross and removed it from their games? I wanna laugh at these pathetic cuck devs
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The list is "almost all of them made by anyone with any money". My previous post was jokey but the Red Cross is actually pretty litigious and the current meme of "using le red cross is le war crimy :^)" is the direct result of them suing the fuck out of tons of media outlets for intellectual property violations.
The Red Cross is almost Nintento-tier in issuing C&Ds over anything that even looks like something they own. I think they only don't do it for religious symbols that are red-on-white because islamic crescents are traditionally red anyway, red stars of david are too rare, and I don't think they actually have legal power over any other religious symbols.
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Right, but most games I remember playing had red crosses in them so I am thinking of the biggest cases where they cucked out. I know that a niche Xbox 360 Tactical JRPG "Operation Darkness" censored not just swastikas(WW2 game) but also removed the red cross from the medic character's armband, which means he just wears a white armband for no reason. Stupid shit, I also know re-releases of Serious Sam and Doom lack red cross on their medkits. Can't think of anything else major at the moment.
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I had to look this up and initially lol'd but it looks like not really but they still made some strange decisions?
Arma 3's kit uses an asterisk, which looks weird at first glance, but the devs are autistic cezchs so maybe the "Star of Life" (more often seen on ambulances and such) is more common there, or they felt that a distinctly "paramedic" symbol is more appropriate than a red cross, since in a milsim game a red cross would imply a literal Red Cross aid station. Just putting a green plus might also not have worked, since in yurop that explicitly means "Pharmacy" to most people. It's not as crazily protected, but it might have looked too goofy to people who associate a green cross with the place you buy hangover cures and off-brand candy.
I haven't played ArmA since melting my PC with A3Free 6 gorillion years ago but this wiki claims the ArmA Reforger items have the usual red cross, with different styling depending on faction. Supposedly ArmA 2 and before didn't have discrete IFAK items. I know OpFlash Dragon Rising (bad game dont play it) didn't in favor of just having loose medical gear in your inventory and it would probably have used the same inventory doctrine as OG OpFlash/old ArmA
After that started happening, a lot of devs just didn't bother putting red crosses in because they knew they'd get sued/users would meme on them for THIS IS LE WARCRYME LOL.
As a sidenote on swastikas, Germany's censorship laws prohibit featuring them at all. It's not super common to remove them entirely from all releases but I could see a studio just not wanting to bother with having a separate German release from an overall PAL one.
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In this particular instance it is because the devs are cucked. There is an interview about how the localizers were watching a holohoax documentary around that time that literally made them cry, supposedly, so they decided to ask the devs to add an entire cutscene where the game stops just so that the characters can hysterically whine about muh 6 gorillion and they did. For reference, the game is normally a JRPG about allied supersoldiers casting spells and werewolves hunting down nazi vampires, with a guest appearance from Jack The Ripper himself and Jin-Roh looking Powered Armored nazis later on if you're wandering what sort of tone the game has. This is why them cucking out on swastikas and the red cross stands out. I was wondering if there was an even more ridiculous example, modern day shooters taking a red cross out of medkits is a pretty boring one for example.
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For the most part, not putting in red crosses is more out of fear of getting sued, or genuine belief in the fuddlore that it is indeed a war crime to use it without authorization. "Cucked" in a sense, but not the sense you're using.
AIEEEEEE
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inverted it is the icon of some mountainous place
(and it also looks like a textbook proton symbol)
(and it also looks like a textbook proton symbol)
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I hate this "hurr durr I'm commiting war crimes in xyz video game/the devs are committing warcrimes by adding the red cross" joke. You can't commit fucking war crimes during peace time moron, otherwise every civillian that has ever worn military fatigues or used a hollow point in self defense would be a war criminal.
Rei is Shit.
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4chanJanitorDefenseForce
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Reminder the Red Cross also had the "play by the rules" shit (https://www.vml.com/work/play-by-the-rules is a mirror, I think. It used to be on icrc.org). They were encouraging gamers not to shoot enemies who were down but not dead, etc (so teammates could revive them and you'd lose when they came back to murder you).
They need to stick to the real world.
They need to stick to the real world.
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If they want to make that cross a "restricted symbol", they should make it something more elaborate instead of a simple red plus sign.
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Fun fact: due to how US IP law works the red cross has passed into the public domain here as a result of prior non-defense in court.
Na, it also specifies any Geneva-protected medical personnel in addition to their transports and work areas. Which means you'd not be allowed to carry a gun or shoot at anyone if you bore anything with a red cross in a milsim, but on the bright side you'd count as a war crime when someone shot you to try and prevent a rescue or revive. So the star of life is a perfect fit for a medical kit carried by an armed combatant.
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I did forget about that aspect; ArmA is truly a proper milsim.
Still weird that the star of life replaces basically every "medical" icon though. Even the HUD icon for "You're hurt, retard!" is a star. Doesn't even have the caduceus, it's just an asterisk.
This is actually an incredibly important concept in vexillology(muh flag study); a red cross on a white background is trivially easy to make. The ease of constructing a flag influenced a lot of old designs, since they're battle standards. Literally shit that a knight might be wearing as a smock to identify himself so some armed retard knows that the sound coming from his direction is the proper marching tune. And just like the Red Cross is super litigious, if it was a more complicated symbol, someone might light them up after misidentifying it or thinking they can get away with saying they misidentified it, and it might fly in court later if that symbol was hard enough to draw that someone fucked it up.
Honestly if SWAT4 had a "surrender" button in multiplayer it would have been a lot more interesting. In general the concept of being able to surrender or at least a rout not being "slaughter them to the man" in a normally violent game would be fun to play with as a designer/writer.