Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage

Comments

• Great way to kill any credibility before you even are known lol

• I am sure some AI is used in all games, but too bad I won’t be watching the game awards again

• This is the dumbest bs I’ve ever heard. He publicly stated they used AI like half a year ago. I am so tired of the “AI took our jobs” people that are STILL WORKING. This is literally discrimination based on usage of a useful tool. Backward-thinking people shouldn’t describe themselves as progressive.

• Gotta cheat so the game they want to win can win some how. Every game awards except the one voted on by Gamers is a bullshit waste of time no one cares about. Who has ever given a single fuck what a “critic” thinks.

• Absolute bullshit! Expedition 33 is still game of the year to everyone. Fuck the indie award.

• This just in: nobody gives a fuck. Even Google didnt Cover this. So yeah, the won the game awards. Not the budget awards you give.

• Genuinely embarrassing decision that stems from an mindset that’s going to seem hopelessly antiquated in not a decade’s time. Generative AI is gross when it’s used as a means for talentless people to create sterile, lifeless “art”, not when it’s used by immensely talented people to sharpen their craft.

  If IGA wanted to make their event look like a complete sham, they succeeded.

• Seems arbitrary and making a dumb stance. I can understand if art or music or voice lines were created via Generative AI and used in the final product, but if it was just in the pipeline for basic use like coding assistance, etc, then it doesn’t seem like a deal.

• The only way any other games will win is by getting rid of the competition lol
  Gotta find any reason to not give it to Claire.

• AI tools are fundamental to all work now, and will only become more important. For example, every coder I know says they’re several times more effective with AI support. These tools free up time for actual creative work. There should be no prohibition against AI in game awards.

• Which part is gen ai in the game? because unfortunately that makes a great argument for gen ai usage as there’s nothing slop about E33.

• We don’t care about your award and Blue Prince is a very overrated mid-tier game. AI bashing is ridiculous.

• Every game developer big and small is using AI in some form. All the Indie Game Awards Nominees use it in some way, and they are lying if they say they are not. Expedition 33 use is understandable, not to replace devs or talent, but to help them.

  This is going to be a losing battle to fight against AI in games in the future

• But Blue Prince also used Ai. They all did. Look it up. It is all politically motivated.

• very good, should be example to others

• Lol, meaningless virtue signaling. Expedition 33 crushed the game awards, and the “Indie game awards” revoked their award after the win already happened? Cope and seethe, AI haters, it still won GOTY.

• Disgusting. Ai is everywhere, its in our phones, our music, its pervasive. I am not surprised its in expedition 33. That doesnt change the content and design and effort of the people that made it. I also love Blue Prince its an amazing game as well. I think they wouldnt have wanted to win the award this way though.

• Wow what a scam to rug pull 33 out of a win. This is why no one cares about your award show and only watches Geoff Keelys.

• Clair Obscur is amazing, and it deserves game of the year in many ways. But it seems like Sandfall entered their nomination without reading the terms of service. 😅

• And just like that, IGA unmasked. E33 deserves the wins plain and simple. They’re ahead of the curve, no AI made it into the game. E33 will be remembered forever and you’ll disappear like a dried turd in the wind. GG.

• Good to hear. Games using Gen AI should always be ineligible for game awards.

• Well, good. Maybe this will discourage AI use in the future for a company considering it.

• sooner or later everything will have AI embedded in it

• Ridiculous. Who are you guys to say what tools game devs can use to make developing our games eaiser. No ones job was replaced. Genie is out of the bottle and if a game can use Ai responsibly than who are you to say different. Taking back an award means that you will never be taken seriously again.

• Good. They knowingly lied about their use of Generative AI and deserve to be disqualified. There is no place in the arts for the plagiarism, planet-killer machine.

• Based.
  All the defense-force fanboys can go kick rocks, AND should go apologize to Halo (Studios), EA Games, GameFreak, Xbox Game Studios, Ubisoft, etc.
  Hopefully CD Project Red, Rockstar Games, and Larian Studios get their reckoning, too (for using AI).

• Of course it’s correct. Any use of GenAI, no matter how insignificant, should be punished with shame and boycott. I was interested to buy E33, but now I will 100% not buy it and not play it. Not a chance.

• It’s so stupid. What legitimate reasons could independent developers have for not using AI-generated tools? If there’s one group for whom this is excusable, it’s them…

• Good.
  Gen AI is trash.
  Do the work.

• COE33 isn’t an indie game to begin with.

• People need to realize that AI is the future for a lot of development efforts. It’s not limited to AAA companies. Disqualifying them for this is silly.

• Completely deserved to have the awards stripped. The AI fad is a plague on humanity and I can’t wait for the bubble to burst.

• AI is used in every single game ever. It’s a very broad term. I think the general public understands ain usage in a game like Clair Obscur. It’s about making devs lives easier, not replacing them. This was never a secret.

• Every game nowadays uses some form of AI and they have for years!! For whatever reason I feel like Rockstar or somebody paid them off because they were jealous of such a phenomenal game! I’m sorry but clair obscur is still game of the year in my book!!

• Are they talking about the AI generated placeholder assets that have been changed to real finished assets like half a year ago? If yes this has to be the stupidest thing I have ever witnessed happen in the gaming space

• While it is sad that a lot of real human effort went into this game, I do think it was the right decision. There is no clear cut line about how much theft is an acceptable amount of theft (and let us be perfectly clear, any generative AI is theft; it can only copy, never create) and so the only logical place to put that line is at “no amount”.

  Hopefully other game development companies and their CEOs (Sven Vincke) will take this as forewarning that their staff are not wrong to be asking them to keep genAI out of their offices.

  No amount of theft is an ok amount of theft.

• Some indie developers can’t afford the artists needed for various aspects of their project such as voice actors. If Gen AI can help, why not? AI isn’t producing the entire game, it’s merely assisting. This should not be an issue with solo indie Devs with little to zero funding.

• This is wild, blow back will be coming in hot.

• Regardless of how you feel about AI, sandfall lied. They knew these awards had a hard stance on AI. They chose to enter anyways. They then chose to lie about it until after they were given the award. At bare minimum the whole thing is scummy. At the end of the day its an arbitrary award and lying about AI to get it is weird and speaks a lot about the studio.

• AI is embedded upstream.

  No matter how many creator’s hands assets pass through, provenance belongs to AI.

  To criticize developers for using it downstream is ridiculous. It has become built into the infrastructure of game design today.

  Criticizing individual developers for downstream or incidental AI use, while ignoring that embedding, is absurd and inconsistent.

• AI will be used everywhere soon. It’s normal to use AI in some development processes. This decision is wishful thinking.

• Absolute crap, gen AI is only a tool and in the years ahead there won’t be a single game being developed without generative AI. They deserve the award, this was a way of coping with the backlash because this particular indie game flew too close to the sun and there were too many butthurt devs whose game weren’t as good whining about it.

• I never played the game, but I watched my brother play it, this is stupid that people think just because it used a little bit of AI means it’s bad, the entire game looked amazing and nothing was bad about it, the people who say “oh this game is bad now that I know it uses AI and I won’t be buying it” are dumb, and you shouldent base your opinion off of online sources, you should play the game before you judge, you need your own opinion, not just agree to some random source about a game being bad, I personally think the game shouldn’t have been disqualified, it’s a good game, with good story, do not trash a game if you never played it or haven’t watched someone play it.

• All games will eventually use AI to some degree.
  Frankly, I doubt most the indie game devs didn’t use gen AI in most the other games nominated.
  I’m a programming and literally don’t know anyone that doesn’t use AI to assist in coding.
  Blue Prince should show that none of their devs used AI. I sincerely doubt it.

• No matter Gen Ai was been used or not, Expedition 33 should not be considered as an indie game in the first place. E33 is my GOTY 2025, but I cannot accept it’s GOTY of indie game 2025. Gen Ai is irrelevant here. By the way, AI is just a tool, like Unreal Engine 5 is a tool, Unity is a tool. If you say using Ai disqualifies nomination, why don’t you also disqualifies game development using UE or Unity and requires game development should include game engine development like Animal Well?

• Except GenAI was only used, from what I can gather, in marketing materials and at the very earliest conceptions to help solidify what some of the broader narrative themes were going to be? There was no GenAI used in the actual development. No GenAI used in creating voices, assets, coding, level design, lighting. It was all done by human hands. At best, the argument here is that GenAI can’t even be used in preproduction.

  And listen, I absolutely despise GenAI. However, Clair Obscur and Sandfall Interactive utilizer 99.9% human development. Are you also going to strip awards from any game that used Photoshop to create assets because half of its tools now operate on the same level as generative AI? Are you gonna strip awards from games that used Word/G-Docs and Excel/G-Sheets because they have AI tools integrated that function even if you turn off all front-facing AI settings possible? Spelling and Grammar Check tools were probably the first iteration of AI tools but you’ve never stripped awards for that.

  It’s not like Sandfall made a game that was equivalent to the AC: Shadows DLC with Attack on Titan. THAT heavily used GenAI and was HORRIBLE. E33 used it to get a starting baseline on SOME, not even all, script decisions, and SOME marketing materials.

  Everyone in the comments needs to find some critical thinking exercises and work on it. I hate GenAI but they used it more responsibly than I could possibly hope for and the game itself was 100% human designed.

• Who gives a hoot about six one indie, the real one was at the game awards.

• Better rid yourselves of any modern tech because everything uses ai in some form now days. We are passed the time where we can generalize its use. Instead of demonizing this studio try giving them a break and actually look into how they used it. E33 is amazing and it’s rediculous it’s been ridiculed as if it was fully produced by ai.

• I think it’s silly to say you can’t use it for non artistic placeholders that would otherwise just be gray.
  HOWEVER, they specifically lied that they didn’t when asked, which is crazy.

• “it can only copy never create” – isn’t that artists too though?

  Nobody is born with creative ideas embedded in their brain, just waiting to be accessed. Humans accumulate knowledge, ideas, styles, from others too (teachers, past artist, books, peers etc) and just mash them together in a creative way. That’s the talent, but it’s all recycled stuff as well, who are we do blame AI for doi the same?

  Or are you saying humans have access to a creative dimension which machines don’t? Where do new ideas come from? This is a much larger philosophical questions than bashing AI for ‘theft’ at an indie game awards.

• Childish and petty *rolls eyes*

• AI Slop has no place at any award ceremony, especially when a dev lies about the extent of it’s use. It was proven that they did use it for art. I don’t know what other areas it poisoned (likely concept art and story elements as well) but I’m not interested in supporting AI Slop of any extent regardless.

• Its the indy awards, so I’m hardly surprised that an “indy” game that is so far ahead of its competitors comes out AFTER getting the award to “come clean” about their use of AI. Talk about curated controversy.
  It just doesnt matter. AI will always be useful in any development environment. It doesn’t mean they are thieves. It just means they are an indy studio who – shock horror – need to be extremely time-effective in their project management.
  By all means take the award away and secure yourselves a place in obscurity as more and more indy producers fess up to the same thing they have to do to make a buck.

• Placeholder assets and Intellisense for programming count as AI? people need to stop using this shit as a buzzword, and start using it where it’s relevant, using tools that assist in game development, does not constitute AI slop.

• Couldnt care less about the indy game awards the ppl behind it are the kind of ppl that should go to demonstations instead of ruining the gaming industry for normal ppl

• I look forwards to ignoring next year’s iga too. Such a stupid decision for such a stupid reason.

• That is stupid. AI is a tool that can be used just like Photoshop or an IDE. It is the how it was used not whether it was used.

  All people saying “boycott everything that used AI” should just stop using the internet because EVERYTHING is using AI. Even your internet provider is using AI to create internal powerpoints or even to write Ansible scripts.
  Don’t use anything anymore if that is your take.

• Great decision! Fuck AI.

• This is one of those decisions where organizers, years later, look back on saying it was a huge mistake to have done so.

• They’re acting like major triple AAA developers aren’t also pumping out slop AI ridden “games” so what if they used it as placeholder graphics. The quality of the rest of the game speaks volumes louder than some dumbass award

• The game came out in April, and shortly after the generative AI texture placeholders were replaced for hand-made textures in a following patch.
  The IGA, despite this being public information, still nominates and awards E33, only to then backtrack? Why nominate it in the first place?

  I love how people in these comments froth at the mere mention of Gen Ai, and grab their pitch forks and torches in a witch hunt, before considering the whole situation.

• Absolute BS. If E33 is going to be disqualified for using AI, which was minimal and didn’t replace the work that artists still used for the game, Blue Prince ALSO needs to be disqualified because they ALSO used AI! There needs to be some nuance to it as there’s a major difference between using AI to completely make your game and having it just assist programmers

• What hypocrites! Remove exp33 and give it the other game, which used AI… wtf… who cares about this award anyway?

• Ai used in developing the soft/hardware the game was made on. The phone they use to exchange ideas in the weekend. The ai used making the car used to drive to work. Etc etc. It’s a real problem keeping it all out.

• Good. Most GenAI are based on theft, and companies should not be rewarded for using them. It doesn’t matter if it was used ‘a little bit’ or ‘only for concept art, not in the end product’. That’s a slippery slope and a compromise of values.

• Think Insider Gaming needs to take a look at the use of LLMs in their comments sections – awful lot of bot replies to this story!

• This is such BS! Even if the whole game was made with Gen AI no normal person would care if looks as it did now. These are just sad pathetic talentless losers crying because they know their days are numbered.

• I can picture The Game Awards wiping Clair Obscure’s name off of a black board with a duster they’re that locked into the past. Then sent their comment via Raven.

• The comments in here are so brain dead. Then again maybe y’all are just okay being lied to. Regardless of your stance on AI, they still lied to get through the award process

• A lot of clanker lovers in the comments

• A bit like not giving the Fields medal because someone had used a calculator, or worse a computer…

• The only correct decision. It doesn’t matter if you think games with genAI deserver awards or not. The simple fact that rules for this particular competition ban games that used genAI and the devs lied about it. So there was no other choice than to take the award away, since it broke the rules this particular competition was being run.

• Good on you, get rid of that AI bull sh and get back to human made art.

• Except that’s not true and all of you people should be utterly ashamed of yourselves. AI was used in pre production for placeholder assets. We saw none of it except one thing which they forgot to replace. All of you saying Sandfall used Gen AI are telling half truths to spin a false narrative and tear down a new studio because they don’t align with your view of politics or AI. Pathetic. You people are utterly pathetic and will be jobless in ten years – thank fucking god.

• Everyone was up in arms against AI until E33 did it. I guess thats the limit. Even if its just placeholder stuff it still affects your vision and testing whether you think it does or not. Its not like placeholders couldnt have been created for testing purposes by real people, feels like a very small time save. They also havent really been clear if all the AI generated stuff was completely removed or was it brushed by real people to be final.

  The game is by far the most fun i had with this year’s releases but the art direction definitely looked like it lacked cohesion and i cannot say it looks.. all human

• LOL as if anyone cares they used AI. Indie awards completely irrelevant. They exist just as a political statement pushing some dei agenda. I’d be surprised if this thing is even around 5 years from now.

• based, fuck these french retards, laughing at the babies crying about this lol. AI slop trash

• I, for one, am happy about this. Using generative AI, even for placeholders like they did, shouldn’t end up in the finished product. They did a mistake by letting them in, whether it was intentional or not, and paid for it. That’s it, end of the debate.

• The anti’s will not win. They don’t know what they’re doing. This is pure ideological Luddite nonsense from a certain subculture. It’s being pushed through propaganda, by people who don’t want individuals to learn about and leverage the tech.

• nah, the award show was trash anyway and they lost a huge chunk of their audience. e33 for sure still won regardless of this nit picky nonsense of having ai in the game for a few days as a place holder for some art. fuck the award show and fuck the clowns who run it

• Lots of tribalism and name-callings (luddite,clanker lovers,anti,scrubs,…) and overall lack of intelligence,
  and while it seems par for the course for the internet to be like…I don’t know.
  It doesn’t feel like this is the internet I got used to.

• They think this will bring them goodwill, I think it only makes them look like amateurs. Plus I wasn’t even aware that there was a self-proclaimed “Indie game award”, they have not got an ounce of legitimacy in my eyes.

• I guess the independent game awards committee have to do something to draw attention to themselves. I wonder if the Expedition 33 team stopped counting their money long enough to give a shit.

• If genAI can produce a masterpiece like Expedition 33 maybe we need more genAI.

  Expedition 33 is still GOTY no matter what you say.

• Well, that’s saddening. Thanks for this decision. Even if one thinks this is minor and stupid and that genAI is just a tool to go faster, I invite them to please understand the broader context of this technology; it’s not just a tool and has wild and vast implications, and should not be normalized, even a little. And if you think it’s what it takes to make a game like that, well then, we just don’t want to live in the same future, and I don’t think games will feel any special or valuable when there will be a dozen AI-generated E33-worthy games released every day in 2035. I’m personally not looking forward to that.

• You wanna tell me you’ve never played the game without telling me you’ve played the game?

  I can’t imagine how much the AI actually affected the moment to moment gameplay. Using a tool to polish up some rough edges would be like telling a carpenter he can’t use sandpaper.

  I haven’t even heard of these runner-ups.

  Thanks for Misery’ing yourself in the fee
  t and losing all credibility with me at the very least.

• Why not kicking all studios with an accouting guy using a generative Ai to deal with excel!
  So much BS, serriously..

• it’s not an indie game, it has a 10 million dollar budget and the founders of that studio are all investor nepo babies, lmao. It shouldn’t have been allowed to participate in an “indie” game awards to begin with.

• Give them their awards back. This is ridiculous!

• You all are being so lame, the rules for the awards were clear and the team lied.
  E33 is still an amazing game but genAI is a serious thing that needs to be taken seriously.
  Stop asking like not winning this award has any real negative impact on E33 they are selling gangbusters and won a bunch of other awards.
  Half the people here dont even see the problem with generative AI being used in creative projects.
  Disgusting, its stolen work end of story. They should have simply admitted to using it and this never would have happened.

• Get woke, go broke.

  Stay human, win the Game Awards.

• lol
  another award and site that is becoming irrelevant

  1 – do your f … homework BEFORE the award. they say they did use AI but indies awards didn’t do they’re homework
  2 – basically every indie game use some form of gen ai and basically all of software dev in general, because guess what: it’s easier to ask bing ai/gemini etc something than a normal search engine so technically speaking it’s AI. i don’t really like when the AI is going now (not because the technology itself, but because of how CEO and some people keep telling us it will replace us) but i use AI at work. not much but i use it and basically everybody use it… it’s a prototype, a boilerplate for a class etc… EVERYBODY uses it… and how can you distinguish between one who uses it and one who doesn’t (except for a few very obvious games): but what they are saying. so basically you will reward people who lie. but hey… your insignificant award got a few article. good for you!
  3 – the fact that is was retracte so fast proves that a – the award givers are incompetent OR b – they planed this for they’re 15 minutes of fame!

• PS:
  regarding the “it isn’t an indie game”
  that is a totally different discussion that it’s irrelevant in this case.
  they could not accept this game because it is not indie, but they did so…. not relevant!

• “the textures were patched out five days after release” – i will life this for people to understand what it happening
  the disqualify them for something that isn’t there and that EVERY company uses!
  also they didn’t lie. the awards where many months after the game was released so the game doesn’t have GAI 😛