The meteoric rise of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was abruptly halted. Just days after winning an award at the 2025 Indie Game Awards, the RPG from French studio Sandfall Interactive had its major accolades revoked. The reason: the use of generative artificial intelligence tools during development, a practice strictly prohibited by the ceremony's rules.
A disqualification due to an inaccurate statement
When submitting its entry to the Indie Game Awards, Sandfall Interactive asserted that no generative AI had been used in the game's development. However, on the evening of the ceremony itself, the studio admitted the opposite, prompting an immediate reaction from the organizers. Six One Indie, the entity overseeing the event, confirmed in a statement that the rules explicitly exclude any game using this type of technology, including during testing or experimentation phases, according to franceinfo.
This revelation led to the withdrawal of the two awards given to the game: Game of the Year and Best First Game. The organizers took responsibility for this decision, stating that even though the elements in question had been corrected afterward, the violation of the rules remained undeniable.
Limited use, but deemed incompatible with the regulations
According to Sandfall Interactive, the AI was used to generate rough drafts of environments, which were then manually refined. This approach was mentioned as early as April 2025 by François Meurisse, the studio's director of operations, in an interview with the Spanish daily newspaper El País. He described its use as simply a phase of technical experimentation, with no intention of it appearing in the final version of the game.
However, after release, some players identified certain problematic textures, which were removed or modified via a patch published a few days later. Despite the studio's acceptance of the penalty, now stating that the current version of the game no longer contains any AI-generated content, the award was reassigned. The Game of the Year title ultimately went to Blue Prince, developed by the Californian studio Dogubomb, while Sorry We're Closed received the award for Best Debut Game.
This case reignites a broader debate about the role of AI in video game creation. While some professionals believe it can help independent studios produce games faster and at a lower cost, others see it as a threat to creative jobs. According to the media outlet Usbek & Rica, the introduction of AI in some major studios, such as Activision, has been accompanied by massive job cuts in recent years. This divide extends far beyond the Clair Obscur case and continues to split the industry.
