Sandfall interactive used genAI to generate "placeholder" which did exist in the release version of the game and was removed within 1 week of release. Sandfall denied using AI when applying for the indie game awards who took back the award and is giving it to Blue Prince which many players are saying also contains genAI.

With that out of the way, fuck gen AI and NO, Blue Prince does not use GenAI, I've completed the game and I do think that they deserve goty for the quality of story and gameplay they delivered, although my hatred for the fanbase just keeps on increasing.

The Indie Game Awards explicitly states that they hate genAI and require the participants to mention beforehand if any GenAI was used in the development of the game, which Sandfall interactive, the developers of CO:E33 lied about/omited. Ever since the GotY nominations, the playerbase has this victim mentality that everyone hates their game and everyone is out to get them and are making false accusations against their game.

The subreddit has become an echo chamber (like most subreddits) And when Indie Game Awards announced they're rescinding the award, many people crawled out from rocks to give their justifications, "well every game uses AI, they just don't disclose it" or "it was just for internal development and they removed it before the launch, so it doesn't have AI anymore so its totally fine" (they didn't remove it before launch), "well autocomplete is also AI so disqualify others too", "who cares about some noname awards, they only want clickbait", "it wasn't an AI slop in the end so its fine", "they gave the award to blue prince who uses 90% AI" and many other bullshit.

First of all, Blue Prince doesn't use AI, this whole rumour was propagated by a single fkin article from TheEscapist who cited nonsense without any actual sources, and now after receiving backlash have issued an apolog, , but you will not hear about this from the e33 fanbase who'll continue saying how Blue Prince uses AI.

My issue is not only with genAI being used by sandfall, but also them not being transparent about it. They only explained it further when they got found out. Not only that, they gave the whole speech at TGA about creativity but using genAI is literally spitting in the face of creativity.

They said they replaced the AI "placeholders" so we don't really know the true extent of how much genAI was used in the development, which is also pretty bad in my opinion. Many people also try to defend the use because "AI use is fine because the final product is not an AI slop", these people are missing the entire point, its never about the final product, same as ai "art", we dont hate it ai "art" because it looks weird, we hate it because its unethical and trained on stolen work.

Its just hypocrisy, if it was some studio like ubisoft or ea that did this, these people would be marching with their pitchfork in hand, but since its their beloved game, "its alright because the game is actually good". And some other statements like E33 is so far above other games that they had to disqualify it so others can have a chance at winning.