Technically, if you think about it, pretty much every hero in overwatch has committed some sort of war crime in their life.
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It is a regular crime…
hmm…well…we joke about mei, but really she hasnt been in anywar til lrecently
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I know! Red Cross didn’t push the issue with them, but they DID get grief for it from a bunch of the gaming community about a year back.
Wars are WEIRD things.
…it took their community this long to actually care?
I understand your concerns, however the issue in the case of Overwatch is not a matter of real-life combat situations which that text covers. Overwatch is a video game, and while they need to strictly follow certain branding rules, and figure out what symbols are acceptable to display in their games (and yes, their legal team has to do a LOT of work on this). Remember we can’t have many nations’ flags as player icons in this game due to legal reasons. I do believe for the purpose of legal definitions the skin is not violating any trademarks, branding identity, or the Geneva Convention itself. However, that is my mere interpretation.
I am going to conclude by saying, these topics on the forums are typically a bad idea because they get everyone upset for often no reason, and I am seeing a lot of replies in this thread that are now violating the Blizzard Forum Code of Conduct. If you have legal concerns you can always send an email to legal@blizzard.com (note due to the high amount of email that catchall email receives you will not receive a response).
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Seems reasonable.
I raised a bug report, and honestly, what they do from there is their own thing. Throwing even a question towards legal is like a bit much.
I just though the situation was weird when Confusiarch brought it up, and worth talking about.
The Red Cross is international. There is an American Red Cross, German Red Cross, UK Red Cross, etc. Then there is the overarching International Red Cross that oversees all the others.
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Something that does not actually affect the working operation of the game really should not be filed as a bug report as that only wastes the time of Blizzard’s Quality Assurance team (which is an entirely separate department from the Overwatch Devs and legal).
Everything anyone says is going to upset someone… it’s the way the world is these days…
Cater to the whiners and cryers…
Ok, I thought that was the right channel. 
I’ve not worked for Blizzard :), their channels would be different from the ones we used.
Mmmmm
It will be interesting how your perspective of things change in your life.
ye…I honestly thought it was obvious that the red crosses worked together… otherwise they would have unique names
You would hope so, but it isn’t always the case.
Charities for example are INFAMOUS for this.
You’d think so, but then there’s someone in this thread who keeps saying weird crap like “Sue the moon!” as if they don’t comprehend that what we’re talking about is the use of a red cross symbol on the battlefield and the rules of engagement that go along with that. (I.e don’t shoot the medic, medics are unarmed/non hostile, shooting medics is a war crime/violation of the geneva convention)
So hey, I guess I get to be the one who explains the obvious. lol
Part of the convention is that each country needs to pass laws to protect the symbols use.
BUT they didn’t provide a legal template, so some used the language IN the convention for it - which is very wide.
It is a special case, BECAUSE it has dedicated laws in many countries, BECAUSE they are a requirement of the treaty.
Stay in context with the game Overwatch. It is just a skin.
If you believe that playing Overwatch results in committing war crimes…well…you may have unveiled a “you” problem.
It’s thier digital world…
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I don’t believe they have at all.
Maybe crossing a few minor laws in a bunch of countries.
Like my argument has NEVER been that they broke the treaty, but that they broke a bunch of the laws which the signing countries of the treaty put in place.
big difference.
They did NOT break the law in NZ for instance, because NZ’s version of the protection laws is very narrow.
In honesty I feel like it almost shouldn’t NEED to be stated that you don’t kill medics/fire on medics/blow up medical convoys/blow up hospitals. I mean there’s no honor in any of that and if you’re on the side of ‘good’ (regardless of whether or not you are actually, as good and evil are subjective) you should do the honorable thing. A downed enemy is not an active enemy and mercy is remembered.
But deep down in my cold, dead, black heart I still have a tiny spark of hope for humanity I guess.
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It shouldn’t be, but we have the convention because yes, it REALLY did.
Yeah, again 100% agreed, but people in war don’t often keep their code.
Yeah. It is like many things in Law, we shouldn’t HAVE to tell you that like, killing each other is bad.
You know, maybe this setting people on fire thing isn’t great either.
I do as well, more so I think the world is getting better as we go on.
I’m on the edge of 50, and I have seen the world improve, like, by a lot. Yeah, we have a pretty bad pollution problem which is getting worse, and there is some pretty bad equality issues out there, but like…
Stuff is improving overall, and people so easily forget that.
Kids these days give me IMMENSE hope for the future. Humans are gonna Human… but that includes some pretty great things.
I just hit 42 two weeks ago. My nephew will be two in a couple months, and I look at him and I can already see how empathetic and kind he is (he always wants to share his cookies with me even if he’s sucked them mushy already) and I know the world is going to take that away from him in short order and it pisses me off so bad.
I know the world is getting better bit by bit, but over the last few years we’ve had a lot of setbacks as well, the rise in hate in general at least in the US is heartbreaking. And our generation (Gen X) is seeing that all our cynical angst really did have a basis in reality. I just hope that we don’t pass it down to the next generation. In the immortal words of Kurt D. Cobain: “Oh well, whatever. Nevermind.”
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