Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 loses Game of the Year after AI disclosure sparks industry debate

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 loses Game of the Year from the Indie Game Awards

* Clair Obscur won multiple awards but used generative AI art as placeholders during production. * The Indie Game Awards revoked Clair Obscur's Debut and Game of the Year after the AI disclosure. * IGAs reassigned the awards (Blue Prince, Sorry We're Closed) and reignited debate on gen-AI use. If you're in the gaming scene right now, you've likely already seen two trends arising after Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won Game of the Year at the Game Awards. The first is a whole bunch of memes claiming that Clair Obscur can win awards it's not even eligible to win, and the second is some serious discourse over games using generative AI to create assets. The latter camp came about after Clair Obscur underwent intense scrutiny after winning nine awards at the Game Awards. People pointed out that the game did use AI-generated assets as placeholders, but then replaced them with human-created assets later. And while the Game Awards has not changed its stance after this discourse began, the Indie Game Awards has seen it as grounds to strip the game of its own Game of the Year award. The Indie Game Awards removes Clair Obscur's Game of the Year award Its Debut Game award is also gone If you'd like to see the Indie Game Award's stance on the subject, you can do so by popping over to the Indie Game Award's FAQ page, clicking on "Game Eligibility," and then expanding the "Why were Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and one Vanguard retracted?" section. Turns out, those generative AI discoveries disqualify Clair Obscur from the running: The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself. When it was submitted for consideration, a representative of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards. The good news is, the Indie Game Awards have moved those prizes to other titles, so they're not going to waste. The Debut Game 2025 now goes to Sorry We're Closed, while the prestigious Game of the Year award is now owned by Blue Prince. However, it seems that what happened to Clair Obscur will add more fire to the grand debate on how much developers should rely on generative AI in their video games, if at all.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 loses a GOTY award over use of gen AI

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took home the Game of the Year and Debut Game honors at the Indie Game Awards on Thursday, but the teams at developer Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive couldn't celebrate for long. On Saturday, the Indie Game Awards retracted Clair Obscur's honors due to inclusion of generative AI assets at launch that were quickly patched out. As detailed on the Indie Game Awards' FAQ page, the organization states that "representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" when the game was submitted for awards consideration. "In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination." Though the AI generated assets were patched out, their initial inclusion was enough for the Indie Game Awards to disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and retract its awards. Polygon has reached out to Sandfall Interactive's representatives for comment. The IGAs Nomination Committee is officially retracting Debut Game and Game of the Year, awarding both categories to new recipients. Additionally, we are retracting one of the Indie Vanguard recipients. Full details can be found in our FAQ under Game Eligibility: www.indiegameawards.gg/faq -- The Indie Game Awards (@indiegameawards.gg) 2025-12-20T18:45:10.232Z Quotes from earlier in the year from Sandfall Interactive's François Meurisse made the rounds on social media last week amid a news cycle caught up in the use of generative AI in games, sparked by comments from Larian Studios' Swen Vincke, who said Larian is using AI tools to develop the forthcoming Divinity. Sandfall Interactive had previously admitted to use of gen AI in developing Clair Obscur. In June, the Spanish outlet El País published a story including an interview conducted around Clair Obscur's launch, in which Meurisse admitted that Sandfall used a minimal amount generative AI in some form during the game's development. "We used some AI, but not much," he said (via Google Translate). "The key is that we were very clear about what we wanted to do and where to invest our efforts. And, of course, technology has allowed us to do things that were unthinkable not long ago." Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched with what some suspected to be AI-generated textures that were then replaced with custom assets in a swift patch. Users on X and Reddit spotted the AI assets, but awareness of them wasn't very widespread. Sandfall and Clair Obscur received nowhere near as much backlash as, say, 11 Bit Studios did for The Alters, which also included AI-generated background assets. For now, the Indie Game Awards is honoring two other games in the categories that Clair Obscur won, with awards "going to the next highest-ranked game in its respective category," according to an explainer on its website. The Debut Game award will go to We're Closed while the Indie Game Awards' Game of the Year honor will be bestowed upon Blue Prince (Polygon's own best game of 2025). Expect acceptance speeches from the developers behind both those games to be shared in early 2026.