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Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage
(insider-gaming.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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Seems excessive.
There’s AI slop games, the new breed of lazy asset flips. There’s replacing employees with slop machines.
And then there’s “a few of our textures were computer generated.” In a game that is clearly passionately crafted art.
I get it’s about principle, but still.
For stuff like dirt/stone/brick/etc textures I'm less strict for the use of generative stuff. I even think having an artist make the "core" texture and then using an AI to fill out the texture across the various surfaces to make it less repetitive over a large area isn't a problem for me.
Like, I agree that these things gernally are ethically questionable with how they are trained, but you can train them on ethically sourced data and doing so could open up the ability to fill out a game world without spending a ton of time, leaving the actual artists more time to work on the important set pieces than the dirt road connecting them.
And little tools like that give studios like this an edge over AAAs. It’s the start of negating their massive manpower advantage.
In other words, the anti-corpo angle seems well worth the “cost” of a few generations. That’s the whole point of AI protest, right? It really against the corps enshittifying stuff.
And little niche extensions in workflows is how machine learning is supposed to be used, like it was well before it got all the hype.
Most AAA studios at this point have in-house AIs and training, I'm not sure it's the equalizing factor people think it is.
An OpenAI subscription does not count.
Otherwise, yeah… but it helps them less, proportionally. AAAs still have the fundamental Issue of targeting huge audiences with bland games. Making them even more gigantic isn’t going to help much.
AAs and below can get closer to that “AAA” feel with their more focused project.
Who made the textures or took the photos that them AI generated ones were derived from, do they get a cut? That justification is even more bizarre now, considering the tools we have to photoscan.
Also what about AI code tools? Like if they use cursor to help write some code does that disqualify them?
If you do that and proceed to say "No we didn't use any AI tools". Then yes, that should be a disqualification.
"When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33."
Yeah.
A lot of devs may do it personally, even if it’s not a company imperative (which it shouldn’t be).
Yes. Shit's buggy enough as it is, infect it with this crap and it's outright malware.
Let them have their award with their own rules.
Although I wouldn't talk about integrity when someone still claims Clair Obscur is an indie.
People have made it excessive due to turning AI into a modern witch hunt. Maybe if people had a more nuanced take than "all AI bad" companies could be more open about how they use AI.
I can guarantee that if E33 came out with the AI disclaimer it would've been far more controversial and probably less successful. And technically they should have an AI label because they did use Gen AI in the development process even if none of it was supposed to end up in the final game.
But we can't have companies being honest because people can't be normal.
Its not surprising when even people who like AI are now being affected by consumer hardware prices that is leading to shift in previously positive perception of it.
Becoming harder to ignore its effects. Gone from a philosophical difference of opinion to actual tangible consequences.
So becomes a question of is AI cool enough to make them happy to put up with the rising cost of hardware, which is something tech enthusiasts tend to care a lot about with it being something needed to even enjoy AI generated stuff in the first place.
How do I put this.
AI isn't exactly the cause of the rise in the price of hardware. Only 1/6th of the purchased Nvidia cards are actually in data centers. Same for the memory.
We're not using it.
What's really drumming up all the prices is that the billionaires are convinced that AI is going to replace tons and tons of people. It's not. It's the insane corporate hype that's doing all the damage.
It will replace some, sure. The same way the electric drill replaced carpenters. One electric drill does not replace one carpenter. That's not how that works. Instead the carpenters can work a bit faster and their job is a bit easier. It's worth buying and it's worth using, but it doesn't really replace a person. Accountants didn't disappear as a profession when spreadsheets were invented.
There were books written in the 1980s about how household appliances raised the standard of cleanliness. Turns out people change clothes more when cleaning clothes doesn't involve a washing board. And I don't think Roombas replaced that many jobs either.
In particular, I think this is a thing that will happen for software development. I don't think it'll reduce the number of developers we need. I think the standards for development will just be higher. All the front end stuff in particular is going to get easier, and you won't need as many frameworks. We'll especially need just as many devs, if not more, in the short term. Someone's going to have to fix the mess all these companies are going to make after they've fired half their devs and tried to just vibe code everything.
that’s a lot if text to basically say it’s cause AI
I agree the current state of affairs makes people even more against AI and I think people have a good reason to be against AI, but don't you find it a bit contradictory how people are less antagonistic towards E33 AI use now that it has been revealed?
People are far more antagonistic towards games when the first thing they see is the AI label, to the point where they dismiss the entire game as AI slop, but it seems people are willing to be more lenient on AI usage when they first get to experience the game for what it is. This unreasonable reaction to the first impression is why companies would rather hide their AI usage rather than inform the customer.
I don't know that people are less antagonist because of E33. I think regular tech hardware enthusiasts are getting gradually angrier after the initial excitement over them when it came to potential improvements in things like NPC behavior. Because its shifting towards not being able to afford hardware to begin with.
Things have moved from somewhat background noise to no longer something they can pretend to be unaffected by. I think the period of discourse over AI was most relevant couple years before hardware issues popped up. Those who hate AI now likely don't even care that much about creative elements. They are just pissed that AI is why prices are going up. They are angry at the AI data centers buying up all the hardware and supplies moving to corporations as consumers get cut off.
I have the same feeling about Kojima's and Vincke's latest comments on AI. Am I supposed to get mad at every single person who said they used/plan to use AI for something? I'd be as outraged as the average Fox News viewer, and it would be impossible to be taken seriously. I still won't be using AI myself (fuck surveillance state AI) and I'd be making every effort to encourage others not to use it, but there's no point in burning bridges and falling for rage bait.
They're creative people who care about the craft and care about the teams in their employ, which gives their statements weight, where some Sony/Microsoft/EA executive making an identical statement has none.
I understand the principle. Even if E33 is not slop, people should fear a road that leads to dependence on “surveillance state AI” like OpenAI. That’s unacceptable.
That being said, I think a lot of people don’t realize how commoditized it’s getting. “AI” is not a monoculture, it’s not transcending to replace people, and it’s not limited to corporate APIs. This stuff is racing to the bottom to become a set of dumb tools, and dirt cheap. TBH that’s something that makes a lot of sense for a game studio lead to want.
And E33 is clearly not part of the “Tech Bro Evangalism” camp. They made a few textures, with a tool.
When I give myself the leeway to think of a less hardliner stance on AI, I come back to Joel Haver's video on his use of ebsynth:
Now my blood boils like everyone else's when it comes to being forced to use AI at work, or when I hear the AI Voice on Youtube, or the forced AI updates to Windows and VS Code, but it doesn't boil for Joel. He clearly has developed an iconic style for his comedy skits, and puts effort into those skits long before he puts it through an AI rotoscope filter. He chose his tool and he uses it sparingly. The same was apparently true for E33, and I have no reason not give Kojima and Larian the same benefit of the doubt.
On the other hand, Joel probably has no idea what I'm talking about when I say "surveillance state AI." People Make Games has a pretty good video exposing its use case. There's also...
Creatives may be aware of some, or all, or none of those things, which is why it's important to continue raising awareness of them. AI may be toothpaste that can't go back in the tube, but it's also a sunk cost fallacy, you don't have to brush your teeth with shit-flavored toothpaste.
You don’t hate AI. You hate Big Tech Evangelism. You hate corporate enshittification, AI oligarchs, and the death of the internet being shoved down your throat.
…I think people get way too focused on the tool, and not these awful entries wielding them while conning everyone. They’re the responsible party.
You’re using “AI” as a synonym for OpenAI, basically, but that’s not Joel Haver’s rotoscope filter at all. That’s niche machine learning.
As for the exponential cost, that’s another con. Sam Altman just wants people to give him money.
Look up what it takes to train (say) Z Image or GLM 4.6. It’s peanuts, and gets cheaper every month. And eventually everyone will realize this is all a race to the bottom, not the top… but it’s talking a little while :/
True on most fronts except one. On a personal level, I do hate AI lol. The large language model itself. I just don't think typing out or speaking out a series of instructions is that useful or efficient. If I want a computer to do something for me, I much prefer the more rigid and unnatural syntax and grammar of programming language. AI tools themselves just don't produce a result that satisfies me.
Again, they’re tools. Some of the most useful applications for LLMs I’ve worked on are never even seen by human eyes, like ranking, then ingesting documents and filling out json in pipelines. Or as automated testers.
Another is augmented diffusion. You can do crazy things with depth maps, areas, segmentation, mixed with hand sketching to “prompt” diffusion models without a single typed word.
You just need to put everything you’ve ever seen with ChatGPT and copilot and the NotebookLM YouTube spam out of your head. Banging text into a box and “prompt engineering” is not AI. Chat tuned decoder-only LLMs are just one tiny slice that a few Tech Bros turned into a pyramid scheme.
Don't produce a result that's satisfies you yet. Early programming also was absolute dog s***.
Give it 20 years, and there's bound to be new things that will replace the current concept of AI that do functionally the same thing just in a manner that actually does produce good results.
Just like we did with everything else computing related.
Hating a tool is the single stupidest f****** thing anyone can do.
That and chat prompting engineer b******* is one tiny tiny slice of the greater hole. It's a footnote in the grand scheme of everything that the colloquial term AI represents. It's just the most marketable one to end users so it's the one that you see everywhere.
Give it another 5 years maybe and local self-trainable models and alternative versions of it will be available that won't have all the theft problems, surveillance problems and other issues. The tech is new and mainly controlled by giant companies right now.
It's not like the tech is going to forever exist in a vacuum in the exact state. It's in nothing ever does. Makes it doubly silly to get mad over a tool.
At the end of the day it's all about the quality in my opinion.
The entire game could be written by ONE passionate person who is awesome at writing the story and the code, but isn't good at creating textures and has no money for voice actors - in which case said textures and all the voices would be AI generated, then hand retouched to ensure quality. That would still be a good game because obvious passion went into the creation of it, and AI was used as a tool to fill out gaps of the sole debeloper's expertise.
A random software house automating a full on pipeline that watches various trends on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc., and chains together various genAI models to create slopware games by the dozens, on the other hand, is undefendable. There's no passion, there's no spirit, there's just greed and abuse of technology.
Differentiation between the two is super important.
So is the source.
If they’re paying a bunch of money to OpenAI for mega text prompt models, they are indeed part of the slop problem. It will also lead to an art “monoculture,” Big Tech dependence, code problems, all sorts of issues.
Now, if they’re using open weights models, or open weights APIs, using a lot of augmentations and niche pipelines like, say, hand sketches to 3D models, that is different. That’s using tools. That’s giving “AI” the middle finger in a similar way to using the Fediverse, or other open software, instead of Big Tech.
People claimed Photoshop would cause a monoculture if you honestly and genuinely believe that AI will as well you're stupid as f***. Like there is no way you can look back on the history of computers, art or human innovation in genuinely believe that anything at any point could create an artistic monoculture.
No, it won't happen. It physically cannot happen humans for the sake of being goddamn stubborn s*** stands will make counterculture art for the sake of it.
The concept of a monoculture is an infeasible made-up nonsensical b******* idea. Humans are too diverse in our whims for to ever happen.
The only way a monoculture could come about is if everyone but one person died off. And that person also decided to never make any form of artistic expressive anything till the day he died.