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.
Sauce: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-how-technology-is-making-art-accessible-to-everyone.html
Not exactly a massive AI slop problem, right?
One of the rules was no AI during development, they voluntarily claimed they didn’t use it.
They used it. Sure, in a minor way, but they used it and got caught.
The rules are the rules. Some chess events ban caffeine, we might laugh and say drinking a cup of coffee is not a big deal - but they’d be disqualified.
This has the same validity as an argument as “I was just following orders” or “I am just doing my job” or “I told you I would hit you in five seconds, so you did know” same reasoning behind teachers that throw students out for being 5 minutes late
We are animals…
… and we do live with them.
Indeed but we don’t have the converse “living with them => no rules”
If you don’t enforce rules then you don’t have rules. You should have learned that dealing with all those teachers who threw you out for being late in school.
There’s nothing to learn from teachers with fragile ego
Sounds like an excuse for bad behavior to me.
Exactly what a teacher with fragile ego would say
Hopefully you’ll learn one day?
Learn to shut up and be obedient? Hopefully never
Ok, reality check: we are talking about video game awards. Calm down.
That doesn’t change the claim. Following the rules for the sake of following the rules instead of understanding why they are there is a defining trait of this sheep behavior.
My guy, the whole “I’m just following orders” is about people harming others because they were ordered to do so, it’s not about acting as a group in general ffs.
Yeah that’s the worst case scenario. But the behavior is bad in general
You won today’s most contrarian person award. The prize is food served by someone who hasn’t washed their hands because they want you to have a strong immune system. To claim your reward please cross the nearest freeway on foot.
But this is like banning someone from a chess event because they experimented with caffeine 3 years ago and accidentally left a single Nespresso pod in their bag. That they also immediately threw in the trash when they noticed
Is there a rule that chess players can’t train with caffeine?
Of course not. It’s not at all the same.
The indie game awards rule is equivalent to my example.
No AI can be used anywhere in the production in any capacity ever.
It’s not just “the released game can’t contain AI generated content”
I don’t understand your argument at all. Your first comment seems to disagree with the ban, but this one explicitly agrees with it.
Your example is weird because it doesn’t exist. There is no restrictions on how chess players train, only how they compete. All you’re doing is building a strawman, not an analogy.
And to be clear, they didn’t get banned for using AI. They got banned for lying about using AI. You can agree or disagree with the rule itself, but it’s not debatable whether it was in place when they entered the contest or whether the studio lied about it.
Nope they got banned for using. That’s the rule of the awards
If we’re following the chess analogy the developers are allowed to use AI to train their skill but not to aide in the actual competition.
Not according to this specific award. It’s all use of all ai during the whole production. Not just released assets.
Did I stutter? Aiding in the production is aiding in the competition.
Or like they submitted a game to an award that said no AI in development, said they didn’t use AI in development, when in reality they did.
Because they thought they didn’t and found out 3 year old in-house AI test assets ended up in the release version. And promptly replaced them with the actual art done by their own actual artists, the ones who did the AI experiment.
That’s fine, but they did use AI in development, so whether or not they removed the assets they should not be included in this award category.
You do acknowledge that “using AI during development” is a massive thing to ban games for.
How can they check for that in the future?
I don’t know. It’s not really up to me to figure that out, either. Companies should self-report on their AI usage.
it’s irrelevant whether you agree with the rule or not… the award is for games that didn’t use AI during development. the game should not have originally been in contention for the award
i tend to agree this is the right way to use AI assets, but this isn’t the award for them… it doesn’t matter if it was accidental, if it was removed before release, or anything else
Yes it’s their rule. It’s a stupid rule.
But how do they intend to police said rule in the future? Since it clearly isn’t just for released art assets but THE WHOLE PROCESS.
If it’s just self reported what’s the point?
Almoat… its like the rule said you cant have used caffeine for the past 5 years and you used some 3 years ago and then lied about it.
If we’re following the chess analogy the developers are allowed to use AI to train their skill but not to aide in the actual competition.
Right. The far bigger problem is how trash of an engine Unreal5 is, and all the forced processing making things look and run like shit. But that’s not just a Clair Obsur problem.
Can I say I agree, very disappointed when I loaded up the game that I had to change so much to make it essentially playable on a high refresh rate 2k monitor. After disabling all the filters and turning off upscaling, I have it working fine but wow its like they made something beautiful and have no idea how to allow people to see it.
After all the comparisons to Larian, I thought I’d see a more competently assembled package with Clair Obscur, but at least everything else is great besides the game engine and graphics settings.