The Indie Game Awards recently announced that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, has been stripped of its Game of the Year and Debut Game wins at the Indie Game Awards 2025 due to the confirmed use of generative AI during development. The titles were originally awarded on December 18, but organizers rescinded them after discovering that some AI-generated assets had been used. Although they were later removed from the game ahead of its launch.
The Indie Game Awards maintain a strict policy that games developed with generative AI are ineligible for nomination, and Sandfall had initially stated that no such tools were used when submitting the game. After an older interview resurfaced confirming AI use, the awards body determined this violated their rules and disqualified Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nominations. As a result, the Indie Game Awards have reassigned the honors: Game of the Year now goes to Blue Prince, and Debut Game has been awarded to Sorry We’re Closed. Both studios have been contacted to provide acceptance speeches for the updated results.
Director Guillaume Broche has since clarified how developer Sandfall Interactive experimented with generative AI during the development of the RPG. In a Q&A session with YouTuber Sushi, Broche explained that everything currently visible in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was created by human developers. However, the emergence of generative AI in 2022 lead the studio to briefly explore the technology as a potential development tool.
“But I can say, everything in the game is human made,” said Broche. “When AI first really came out in 2022, we’d already started on the game. It was just a new tool, we tried it, and we didn’t like it at all. It felt wrong. We had originally used it as a placeholder for textures we missed, but we took it out as soon as we found it.”
Broche went on to reiterate the studio’s stance, adding, “But yeah, the concept art, voice actors, everything is human made. It’s pretty hard what the future will look like, but everything will be made by humans from us.”
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