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Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

• danielbln 11mo ago
  I bet if they'd only used AI assisted coding would be a complete non-event, but oh no, some inconsequential assets were generated, grab the pitchforks!
  • hambes 11mo ago
    Maybe, but that is a different issue. The use of generative AI for art is being rightfully criticised because it steals from artists. Generative AI for source code learns from developers - who mostly publish their source with licenses that allow this. The quality suffers in both cases and I would personally criticise generative AI in source code as well, but the ethical argument is only against profiting from artists' work eithout their consent.
    • ahartmetz 11mo ago
      > Generative AI for source code learns from developers - who mostly publish their source with licenses that allow this. As far as I'm concerned, not at all. FOSS code that I have written is not intended to enrich LLM companies and make developers of closed source competition more effective. The legal situation is not clear yet.
      • glimshe 11mo ago
        FOSS code is the backbone of many closed source for-profit companies. The license allows you to use FOSS tools and Linux, for instance, to build fully proprietary software.
        • ahartmetz 11mo ago
          Sure, that usage is allowed by the license. The license does not allow copying the code (edit: into your closed-source product). LLMs are somewhere in between.
        • m4rtink 11mo ago
          Well, if its GPL you are supposed to provide the source code to any binaries you ship. So if you fed GPL code into your model, the output of it should be also considered GPL licensed, with all implications.
      • orwin 11mo ago
        To me, if the AI is trained on GPLv3/AGPL code, any code it generate should be GPLv3/AGPL too, the licence seems clear imho.
    • protimewaster 11mo ago
      I'm not sure how valid it is to view artwork differently than source code for this purpose. 1. There is tons of public domain or similarly licensed artwork to learn from, so there's no reason a generative AI for art needs to have been trained on disallowed content anymore than a code generating one. 2. I have no doubt that there exist both source code AIs that have been trained on code that had licenses disallowing such use and art AIs have that been trained only on art that allows such use. So, it feels flawed to just assume that AI code generation is in the clear and AI art is in the wrong.
    • NitpickLawyer 11mo ago
      > rightfully criticised because it steals from artists. Generative AI for source code learns from developers The double standard here is too much. Notice how one is stealing while the other is learning from? How are diffusion models not "learning from all the previous art"? It's literally the same concept. The art generated is not a 1-1 copy in any way.
      • blackbrokkoli 11mo ago
        It's a double standard because it's apples and oranges. Code is an abstract way of soldering cables in the correct way so the machine does a thing. Art eludes definition while asking questions about what it means to be human.
        • danielbln 11mo ago
          I love that in these discussions every piece of art is always high art and some comment on the human condition, never just grunt-work filler, or some crappy display ad. Code can be artisanal and beautiful, or it can be plumbing. The same is true for art assets.
          • IshKebab 11mo ago
            Yeah this was probably for like a stone texture or something. It "eludes definition while asking questions about what it means to be human".
          • NitpickLawyer 11mo ago
            Exactly! Europa Universalis is a work of art, and I couldn't care less if the horse that you can get as one of your rulers is aigen or not. The art is in the fact that you can get a horse as your ruler.
          • kome 11mo ago
            I agree, computer graphics and art were sloppified, copied and corporate way before AI, so pulling a casablanca "I'm shocked, shocked to find that AI is going on in here!" is just hypocritical and quite annoying.
    • jzebedee 11mo ago
      "Mostly" is doing some heavy lifting there. Even if you don't see a problem with reams of copyleft code being ingested, you're not seeing the connection? Trusting the companies that happily pirated as many books as they could pull from Anna's Archive and as much art as they could slurp from DeviantArt, pixiv, and imageboards? The GP had the insight that this doesn't get called out when it's hidden, but that's the whole point. Laundering of other people's work at such a scale that it feels inevitable or impossible to stop is the tacit goal of the AI industry. We don't need to trip over ourselves glorifying the 'business model' of rampant illegality in the name of monopoly before regulations can catch up.
    • wiseowise 11mo ago
      > The quality suffers in both cases According to your omnivision?
    • eucyclos 11mo ago
      I really don't agree with this argument because copying and learning are so distinct. If I write in a famous author's style style and try to pass my work off as theirs, everyone agrees that's unethical. But if I just read a lot of their work and get a sense of what works and doesn't in fiction, then use that learning to write fiction in the same genre, everyone agrees that my learning from a better author is fair game. Pretty sure that's the case even if my work cuts into their sales despite being inferior. The argument seems to be that it's different when the learner is a machine rather than a human, and I can sort of see the 'if everyone did it' argument for making that distinction. But even if we take for granted that a human should be allowed to learn from prior art and a machine shouldn't, this just guarantees an arms race for machines better impersonating humans, and that also ends in a terrible place if everyone does it. If there's an aspect I haven't considered here I'd certainly welcome some food for thought. I am getting seriously exasperated at the ratio of pathos to logos and ethos on this subject and would really welcome seeing some appeals to logic or ethics, even if they disagree with my position.
    • conradfr 11mo ago
      Is there a OSS licence that excludes LLM?
      • david_shaw 11mo ago
        I'm not sure about licenses that explicitly forbid LLM use -- although you could always modify a license to require this! -- but GPL licensed projects require that you also make the software you create open source. I'm not sure that LLMs respect that restriction (since they generally don't attibute their code). I'm not even really sure if that clause would apply to LLM generated code, though I'd imagine that it should.
        • glimshe 11mo ago
          They don't require it if you don't include OSS artifacts/code in your shipped product. You can use gcc to build closed source software.
          • swiftcoder 11mo ago
            > You can use gcc to build closed source software Note that this tends to require specific license exemptions. In particular, GCC links various pieces of functionality into your program that would normally trigger the GPL to apply to the whole program, and for this reason, those components had to be placed under the "GCC Runtime Library Exception"[1] [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1.html
        • 1gn15 11mo ago
          Very likely no license can restrict it, since learning is not covered under copyright. Even if you could restrict it, you couldn't add a "no LLMs" clause without violating the free software principles or the OSI definition, since you cannot discriminate in your license.
          • hofrogs 11mo ago
            "Learning" is what humans can do. LLMs can't do that.
    • pona-a 11mo ago
      > Generative AI for source code learns from developers - who mostly publish their source with licenses that allow this. I always believed GPL allowed LLM training, but only if the counterparty fulfills its conditions: attribution (even if not for every output, at least as part of the training set) and virality (the resulting weights and inference/training code should be released freely under GPL, or maybe even the outputs). I have not seen any AI company take any steps to fulfill these conditions to legally use my work. The profiteering alone would be a sufficient harm, but it's the replacement rhetoric that adds insult to injury.
      • starkparker 11mo ago
        This cuts to the bone of it tbqh. One large wing of the upset over gen AI is the _unconsenting, unlicensed, uncredited, and uncompensated_ use of assets to make "you can't steal a style" a newly false statement. There are artists who would (and have) happily consented, licensed, and been compensated and credited for training. If that's what LLM trainers had led with when they went commercial, if anything a sector of the creative industry would've at least considered it. But companies led with mass training for profit without giving back until they were caught being sloppy (in the previous usage of "slop").
    • stinkbeetle 11mo ago
      > The use of generative AI for art is being rightfully criticised because it steals from artists. Generative AI for source code learns from developers - who mostly publish their source with licenses that allow this. This reasoning is invalid. If AI is doing nothing but simply "learning from" like a human, then there is no "stealing from artists" either. A person is allowed to learn from copyright content and create works that draw from that learning. So if the AI is also just learning from things, then it is not stealing from artists. On the other hand if you claim that it is not just learning but creating derivative works based on the art (thereby "stealing" from them), then you can't say that it is not creating derivative works of the code it ingests either. And many open source licenses do not allow distribution of derivative works without condition.
      • program_whiz 11mo ago
        Everyone in this thread keeps treating human learning and art the same as clearly automated statistical processes with massive tech backing. Analogy: the common area had grass for grazing which local animals could freely use. Therefore, it's no problem that megacorp has come along and created a massive machine which cuts down all the trees and grass which they then sell to local farmers. After all, those resources were free, the end product is the same, and their machine is "grazing" just like the animals. Clearly animals graze, and their new "gazelle 3000" should have the same rights to the common grazing area -- regardless of what happens to the other animals.
        • joquarky 11mo ago
          Isn't this expected of late stage capitalism?
          • stinkbeetle 11mo ago
            Isn't what to be expected? And define late stage capitalism.
        • stinkbeetle 11mo ago
          I'm not sure why you are replying to me. I made no such treatment of them. The analogy isn't really helpful either. It's trivially obvious that they are different things without the analogy, and the details of how they are different are far too complex for it to help with.
    • m-schuetz 11mo ago
      Most OS licenses requires attribution, so AI for code generation violates licenses the same way AI for image generation does. If one is illegal or unethical, then the other would be too.
    • SirHumphrey 11mo ago
      No, the only difference is that image generators are a much fuller replacement for "artists" than for programmers currently. The use of quotation marks was not meant to be derogatory, I sure many of them are good artists, but what they were mostly commissioned for was not art - it was backgrounds for websites, headers for TOS updates, illustrations for ads... There was a lot more money in this type of work the same way as there is a lot more money in writing react sites, or scripts to integrate active directory logins in to some ancient inventory management system than in developing new elegant algorithms. But code is complicated, and hallucinations lead to bugs and security vulnerabilities so it's prudent to have programmers check it before submitting to production. An image is an image. It may not be as nice as a human drawn one, but for most cases it doesn't matter anyway. The AI "stole" or "learned" in both cases. It's just that one side is feeling a lot more financial hardship as the result.
      • surgical_fire 11mo ago
        Finally a good point in this thread. There is a problem with negative incentives, I think. The more generative AI is used and relied upon to create images (to limit the argument to inage generation), the less incentive there is for humans go put in the effort to learn how to create images themselves. But generative AI is a deadend. It can only generate things based on what already exists, remixing its training data. It cannot come up with anything truly new. I think this may be the only piece of technology humans created that halts human progress instead of being something that facilitates further progress. A dead end.
        • tstrimple 11mo ago
          I feel like these exact same arguments were made with regard to tools like Photoshop and Dreamweaver. It turns out we can still build websites and artists can still do artist things. Lowering the bar for entry allows a TON of people to participate in things that they couldn't before, but I haven't seen that it kills curiosity in the folks who are naturally curious about things. Those folks will still be around taking things apart to see how they work.
    • tstrimple 11mo ago
      I've always thought it was weird how artists are somehow separate and special in the creation process. Sometimes to the point of getting royalties per copy sold which is basically unheard of for your meager code monkey.
  • altairprime 11mo ago
    I’d take that bet against you.
    • danielbln 11mo ago
      Ok great, but you don't really say much.
      • pseudalopex 11mo ago
        Your comment had no more substance.
    • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
      The challenge of course is determining if AI was used in the coding.
    • kcb 11mo ago
      You think there’s any non niche game developers not using a coding assistant at this point? You think Epic is not using code assistants to develop Unreal Engine?
  • expedition32 11mo ago
    It is a non event for consumers the only ones who care much are artists. As always the market decides.
• ares623 11mo ago
  Great opportunity for a new award body that allows AI use.
  • Ekaros 11mo ago
    True. Especially indie game awards. That have the least resources available and most like would benefit most from some use of AI. At that scale often even reasonably paid game developers are expensive.
  • manojlds 11mo ago
    Just to be clear, it's some Indie Game awards, not the main The Game Awards
  • citizenkeen 11mo ago
    That’s not how awards work. Awards trade on prestige. In order for an award to matter, the people you’re giving it to have to care. I think you’ll find most of the small teams making popular indie video games aren’t going to be interested in winning a pro-AI award.
    • nottorp 11mo ago
      > In order for an award to matter, the people you’re giving it to have to care. Are you sure? Maybe not in gaming, but I'm sure most large companies create awards just to get them and mention them in marketing. I wouldn't be surprised if the likes of EA and Ubisoft create a "best use of AI in gaming" award for next year.
    • rowanG077 11mo ago
      I don't think pro-AI was discussed. It was rather not being anti-AI.
  • YokoZar 11mo ago
    I hear FIFA makes new awards these days
• protimewaster 11mo ago
  I wonder what definition of AI they're using? If you go by the definition in some textbooks (e.g., the definition given in the widely used Russell and Norvig text), basically any code with branches in it counts as AI, and thus nearly any game with any procedurally generated content would run afoul of this AI art rule.
  • spencerflem 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • protimewaster 11mo ago
      It's not meant to be clever. They have a rule that says, in its entirety, "Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination." Do they count procedural level generation as generative AI? Am I crazy that this doesn't seem clear to me?
      • rpdillon 11mo ago
        No, we're at the phase with AI where people have extremely strong feelings, it's not well understood, and the definitions are not clear. I am with you in that rules like this seem dogmatic and hard to understand the implications of.
  • oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
    Their FAQ only states: > Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination. I haven't found anything more detailed than that; I'm not sure if anything more detailed actually exists, or needs to.
    • protimewaster 11mo ago
      That's all I've found as well, but, personally, I find that a bit unclear, for a couple of reasons. First, are they saying that the game itself can use generative AI, but it can't be used in the development of the game? So that would mean that if the game itself generates random levels using a generative AI approach, that's allowed, but, if I were to use that same code to pre-generate and manually modify the levels, that wouldn't be allowed because I'm now using generative AI as part of the development process? I.e., I can create a game that itself is a generative AI, but I can't use that AI I've built as part of the development of a downstream game? And, second, what counts as generative AI? A lot of people wouldn't include procedural generative techniques in that definition, but, AFAIK, there's no consensus on whether traditional procedural approaches should be described as "generative AI". And a third thing is, if I use an IDE that has generative AI, even for something as simple as code completion, does that run afoul of the rule? So, if I used Visual Studio with its default IntelliCode settings, that's not allowed because it has a generative AI-based autocomplete?
• enraged_camel 11mo ago
  This is so ridiculous that I suspect that it will be even better publicity for them than the award itself.
  • marginalia_nu 11mo ago
    Dunno if they even care too much about that, the game is already a breakaway success.
  • manojlds 11mo ago
    It's some random Indie award, not the main The Game Awards. Clair Obscur has enough publicity already and rightly so.
• dartharva 11mo ago
  I think it's more the fact that they lied before nomination than the AI usage itself. Any institution is bound to disqualify a candidate if it discovers it was admitted on false grounds. I wonder if the game directors had actually made their case beforehand, they would have perhaps been let to keep the award. That said, the AI restriction itself is hilarious. Almost all games currently being made would have programmers using copilot, would they all be disqualified for it? Where does this arbitrary line start from?
  • voidfunc 11mo ago
    > That said, the AI restriction itself is hilarious. Almost all games currently being made would have programmers using copilot, would they all be disqualified for it? Where does this arbitrary line start from? AI OK: Code AI Bad: Art, Music. It's a double standard because people don't think of code as creative. They still think of us as monkeys banging on keyboards. Fuck 'em. We can replace artists.
    • spencerflem 11mo ago
      You get why people hate AI when AI boosters talk like this, right?
    • dartharva 11mo ago
      > It's a double standard because people don't think of code as creative. It's more like the code is the scaffolding and support, the art and experience is the core product. When you're watching a play you don't generally give a thought to the technical expertise that went into building the stage and the hall and its logistics, you are only there to appreciate the performance itself - even if said performance would have been impossible to deliver without the aforementioned factors.
      • realusername 11mo ago
        I would disagree, code is as much the product in games as the assets. Games always have their game engine touch and often for indie games it's a good part of the process. See for example Clair Obscur here which clearly has the UE5 caracter hair. It's what the game can and cannot do and shapes the experience. Then the gameplay itself depend a lot on how the code was made and iterations on the code also shape the gameplay.
• blackbrokkoli 11mo ago
  Is anyone else detecting a phase shift in LLM criticism? Of course you could always find opinion pieces, blogs and nerdy forum comments that disliked AI; but it appears to me that hate for AI gen content is now hitting mainstream contexts, normie contexts. Feels like my grandma may soon have an opinion on this. No idea what the implications are or even if this is actually something that's happening, but I think it's fascinating
  • wiseowise 11mo ago
    Typical brigading, same with blm, woke, right wing, etc.
    • AmbroseBierce 11mo ago
      Wow you do mentally group things efficiently, that much I can say.
      • scrambttn 11mo ago
        [flagged]
        • watwut 11mo ago
          He made apparent analogy. You dont have to be so oversensitive that any mention of feminism and women blows into woke attack in your head.
      • wiseowise 11mo ago
        Anything wrong with the grouping? Or you don’t agree that most of those employ extreme brigading tactics to destroy opponents?
  • GaryBluto 11mo ago
    People were told by other people to dislike LLMs and so they did, then told other people themselves.
• wtcactus 11mo ago
  It’s interesting, because we have examples of other sects in the past that also opposed human progress through technology. History is repeating itself. For instance, see Luddites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
  • eucyclos 11mo ago
    I really like Neal Stephenson's neologism 'amistics' - referring to which technologies a culture knows about but chooses not to use.
  • surgical_fire 11mo ago
    It's unclear if Gen AI promotes any sort of human progress. By all means, I use it. In some instances it is useful. I think it is mostly a technology that causes damages to humanity though. I just don't really care about it.
  • ad_hockey 11mo ago
    That does the Luddites a bit of a disservice: > But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices. “They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.”[1] [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-rea...
    • 1gn15 11mo ago
      In that case, the neo-Luddites are worse than the original Luddites, then? Since many are definitely not "totally fine with the machines", and definitely do not confine their attacks only on the manufacturers that go against worker rights, but they include the average person in their attacks. And the original Luddites already got a lot of hate for attempting to hold back progress.
• skibidithink 11mo ago
  The AI witch hunt claims its first victim, apparently over some placeholder textures. https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-how-technology-is-making-art-accessible-to-everyone.html https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-c... > Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative AI-created assets in the game. When the first AI tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within 5 days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process.
  • thiht 11mo ago
    That’s incredibly harsh. A blanket ban on AI generated assets is dumb as hell. Generating placeholder assets is completely acceptable.
    • oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
      I agree, even though I'm not in favour of gen ai. It was a terrible mistake letting placeholder assets get out in the final release, but it shouldn't actually count as shipping AI-generated content in your product.
      • mvdtnz 11mo ago
        It literally is shipping AI generated content in the product.
        • culturestate 11mo ago
          > It literally is shipping AI generated content in the product. When someone goes three miles per hour over the speed limit they are literally breaking the law, but that doesn’t mean they should get a serious fine for it. Sometimes shit happens.
• andrewstuart 11mo ago
  Well that’s a rule that makes no sense. These awards are behind the times and risk irrelevance. What software in 2025 is written without AI help? Every game released recently would have AI help.
  • oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
    > Every game released recently would have AI help. For indie games in particular, that is very much not true. In fact, Steam has a 'made with AI' label, so it's not even true on that platform.
    • qbit42 11mo ago
      You think many are built without any assistance for coding? My impression was that people were mostly concerned about game assets like graphics and music
      • oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
        I think many are built without the use of gen ai to create assets. Obviously, the term "AI" is flexible enough that you could clarify every piece of software as involving AI if you wanted to, but I don't think that's productive.
        • Mkengin 11mo ago
          I would assume that if a tool is there and the alternative too costly that they would use the tool instead of buring their project. Just today I stumbled over this for example, where they use GenAI as well: https://reddit.com/comments/1prqfsu https://reddit.com/comments/1prqfsu
      • Hamuko 11mo ago
        Do you have proof that many are using AI for coding?
        • 11mo ago
• instagib 11mo ago
  All press is good press. Few care about the mainstream game review sites or oddball game award shows as their track record is terrible (Concord reviews). Most go by player reviews, word of mouth, and social media.
• jfernandezr 11mo ago
  After the huge impact on the PC gaming community, it's logical to despise AI and ban it from any awards. First cryptocurrencies pumped huge price raises on GPUs, then prices won't return to normal due to AI and now it's impacting RAM prices. Next year a lot of families will struggle to buy a needed computer for their kids' school due to some multibillion techs going all-in.
  • foxheadman 11mo ago
    I play games on cheap hardware. I would like awards to focus on the quality of the game, rather than how they were made. Awards that focus on quality is too desired to not be a thing. I expect generative AI to become a competitive advantage taken up by the vast majority.
  • lostmsu 11mo ago
    Compute demand likely improved today's availability and performance of hardware.
• spuz 11mo ago
  There is a small irony that the Indie Game Awards rejects nominations of games using AI but The Game Awards does not. It is independent teams of developers who are less likely to be able to afford to pay an artists who may be able to produce something of value with AI assets that they otherwise would not have the resources for. On the other side, it is big studios with a good track record and more investment who are more likely to be able to pay artists and benefit from their artistry. To me, art is a form of expression from one human being to another. An indie game with interesting gameplay but AI generated assets still has value as a form of expression from the programmer. Maybe if it's successful, the programmer can afford to pay an artist to help create their next game. If we want to encourage human made art, I think we should focus on rewarding the big game studios who do this and not being so strict on the 2 or 3 person teams who might not exist without the help of AI. (I say this knowing Clair Obscur was made by a large well respected team so if they used AI assets I think it's fair their award was stripped. I just wish The Game Awards would also consider using such a standard.)
  • oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
    I agree that this holds in theory, but in practice? All the overhyping of AI I've heard from the gaming sector has come from the big studios, not indies. And, as you point out, Clair Obscur isn't the 'most indie' of indies anyway.
    • theshrike79 11mo ago
      Maybe the small studios just use it as a tool and don’t need to hype it to make it look good for stock holder interests.
      • PunchyHamster 11mo ago
        That's what semi-recent whining about Larian saying they use AI was about. They just use it to cut some of the boring work and iterate over some ideas, once the idea is in stone actual artist does it. I don't see the problem because it isn't cutting more artists out of the loop, if anything they get more of the meaningful work
• user____name 11mo ago
  If a fraction of the AI money would go into innovative digital content creation tools and workflows I'm not sure AI would be all that useful to artists. Just look at all those Siggraph papers throughout the years that are filled with good ideas but lacked the funding and expertise to put a really good ui on top.
• delichon 11mo ago
  To be consistent, if you wish to protect workers by rejecting artificially produced assets, you should feel the same about textiles produced by industrial machinary. Either this decision was wrong or the Luddites had a good point.
  • Ekaros 11mo ago
    If the product is not made from material dug out from ground or plants or animals by only bare hands. And I mean bare hands. Is it even worth buying?
    • theshrike79 11mo ago
      If the worker isn’t suffering because of useless manual work, I don’t want to buy it. Machines? Bah, humbug! /s
  • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
    Sure, but for the body of folks offering a gaming award, there is little power they have over the textile industry. To others you may be addressing, I suspect they would say the ship has already sailed on textiles. Perhaps they are trying to sink this ship before it sails.
• m-schuetz 11mo ago
  People were against steam engines, tractors, CGI, self-checkouts, and now generative AI. After some initial outrage, it will be tightly integrated into society. Like how LLMs are already widely used to assist in coding.
  • Ray20 11mo ago
    Or not. Unlike all of the above, AI directly conflicts with the concept of intellectual property, which is backed by a much larger and more influential field.
    • joquarky 11mo ago
      Intellectual property is a purely institutional abstraction agreed upon by arbitrary social contract written to satisfy the standard of "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". AI exists by calculations without invoking law or social agreement. Which will endure? IP depends on belief and enforcement. AI depends on matter and energy.
• littlecranky67 11mo ago
  Why is usage of AI even a discussion point? Steam also now enforces publishers to disclose if they used AI during game creation. It is a tool, and as a consumer I judge the end product. I don't care what tools were used in the production, just as I don't care if you use Photoshop, Pixelmator, Maya, 3DSMax or whatnot. The end result is what counts. And if the end result is full of bullshit AI slop and is not fun to play, don't give them an award. I played Claire Obscure and it is an absolut stunning and beautiful game.
• b3lvedere 11mo ago
  These things will keep happening and the bar to be against certain use cases of AI will shift gradually over time. Before we know it we will have entrusted a lot to AI and that can be both a good or a bad thing. The acceleration of development will be amazing. We could be well on our way to expand into the universe.
• jokoon 11mo ago
  indie game? with their budget and staff? really? those guys worked in AAA studios and they got a 10 millions budget how "indie" is that?
  • krapp 11mo ago
    "indie" is just a marketing term now, it doesn't actually mean anything specific.
    • oneeyedpigeon 11mo ago
      Exactly like "AI"!
  • jltsiren 11mo ago
    Indie Game Awards defines it like this: "Existing outside of the traditional publisher system, a game crafted and released by developers who are not owned or financially controlled by a major AAA/AA publisher or corporation, allowing them to create in an unrestricted environment and fully swing for the fences in realizing their vision." In other words, "indie" means a developer-driven game independent of the establishment. It doesn't necessarily imply a low budget or the lack of professional experience.
• qwertytyyuu 11mo ago
  Oh its AI that makes not indie, not the huge funding.
  • theshrike79 11mo ago
    Should indie games have a maximum budget?
    • Arwill 11mo ago
      Yes. If you get 120M+ in funding, you no longer qualify to be called indie.
      • theshrike79 11mo ago
        So what would the limit be in your mind? Does it include marketing?
        • akimbostrawman 11mo ago
          regardless of the definition of the word. i don't think anybody would call a game indie that has tens of millions in production budget, over 300 developer working on it and a movie deal before it was even released.
          • theshrike79 11mo ago
            So under ten million max then? What's the maximum developer count? Do outsourced assets count, if so, how? By the amount of people who directly worked on the assets by the outsource company or the whole headcount?
            • akimbostrawman 11mo ago
              just admit you have no idea about indie games. for many years now it has been clear what is NOT an indie game and 7 figure production budget (marketing not included, most indie games don't even have those outside of social media) with hundredth of people working on it is exactly that. just compare them to any other indie game before if you want to educate yourself about something before posting. they had a whole orchestra of the size of whole indie game studios for the music alone, does that seem like indie?
• pfdietz 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• 10xDev 11mo ago
  You need to separate AI usage from automating certain parts of a pipeline from end to end creation. Taking a scorched earth approach to AI usage is just being a luddite.
  • AssassinDuck 11mo ago
    I don't think this argument is going to be very compelling. The people whom you would be trying to convince here, would just argue that the Luddites were correct in their fight against human labor being displaced. They'll argue that the power artisans had over their work was diminished with the advent of the loom, just like the power artists have over their labor is being diminished right now.
    • 10xDev 11mo ago
      No you are just not understanding the difference between changing and optimising workflow from displacing creativity and artists.
    • soerxpso 11mo ago
      You don't really need to win an argument with luddites. Completely rejecting extremely useful technology and then picking a fight with people who don't is a way to speedrun losing, whether you have "compelling arguments" or not. If the Luddites were correct, they wouldn't be dead.
      • asadotzler 11mo ago
        So living or dying proves right and wrong? So, if the Polish were right the Germans wouldn't have massacred millions of them? What a garbage position.
    • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
      I don't disagree with your point, but regardless of how you or I feel about it, this flap will likely seem quaint a decade from now. It's the unstoppable way the world is moving. I'd love for them to create a separate category for "Best non-AI game". They can fight it out over that award. Perhaps then in a decade or so they will quietly let the award category fade away.
• sergioisidoro 11mo ago
  This is crazy. Tools like photoshoot have gen ai tools in them. Does that mean that Photoshop is now a minefield for artists? If a single artist uses the wrong tool once they disqualify the entire final product for awards, even if the asset is fully removed on the final build.
  • theshrike79 11mo ago
    IDEs now have “AI” autocomplete; will a game become ineligible if a single dev accidentally presses tab instead of writing the whole function by hand? If a script writer uses ChatGPT to generate ideas, straight up ban? Where does the organisation intend to draw the line?
    • miohtama 11mo ago
      They don't. Because selling hate does not draw lines.
    • Devasta 11mo ago
      > Where does the organisation intend to draw the line? The answer to this question is always "somewhere". Just because I can't proclaim an exact number of trees that constitute a forest doesn't mean the concept doesn't exist.
      • _aavaa_ 11mo ago
        > doesn't mean the concept doesn't exist. No, but it becomes a dubious concept when you define forests as a collection of only conifer trees and that deciduous trees don't count for the definition of a forest.
    • quectophoton 11mo ago
      Better blacklist Google as well. You don't want anyone on the team searching anything on Google lest their search accidentally triggers the LLM response (meaning: they prompted Google Gemini).
  • program_whiz 11mo ago
• veidr 11mo ago
  LOL this is beyond idiotic. Banning AI-generated assets from being used in the game is a red line we could at least debate. But banning using AI at all while developing the game is... obviously insane on its face. It's literally equivalent to saying "you may not use Photoshop while developing your game" or "you may not use VS Code or Zed or Cursor or Windsurf or Jetbrains while developing your game" or "you may not have a smartphone while developing your game".
  • nottorp 11mo ago
    > you may not use VS Code or Zed or Cursor or Windsurf or Jetbrains while developing your game Just to nitpick, AAA game developers probably don't use the editors you mentioned since they do native applications.
    • veidr 11mo ago
      Interesting. I don't do games, so I may be wrong, but I thought a lot of Unreal Engine devs used Jetbrains. So what editors do they use? Are there current IDEs or code editors shipping in 2025 that don't have any LLM-based coding features?
      • nottorp 11mo ago
        I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of any native debugging support except in visual studio... the native one.
        • theshrike79 11mo ago
          For C# Rider has had superior tooling for debugging for years now.
        • veidr 11mo ago
          OK, maybe my point got lost because I didn't know that, but I should have just added Visual Studio to my list — it too has LLM and agentic features, which was my point. If you can't use LLMs to generate placeholder graphics that don't ship in the actual game, then why can you use coding editors that let you use LLMs to generate code?
• viraptor 11mo ago
  Since it's not shown in the article, the placeholder was the newspapers here; https://rl.bloat.cat/preview/pre/bn8bzvzd80ye1.jpeg?width=1624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dc13514a19ac2ff6964c89db62dd5ba1d2831359 https://rl.bloat.cat/preview/pre/bn8bzvzd80ye1.jpeg?width=16... via https://rl.bloat.cat/r/expedition33/comments/1k6yv8a/does_this_game_use_aigenerated_art_assets/?rdt=64202 https://rl.bloat.cat/r/expedition33/comments/1k6yv8a/does_th...
  • latexr 11mo ago
    That’s the after image, here’s the before (also from that thread): https://rl.bloat.cat/preview/pre/k7zsc1nls7af1.jpeg?width=1998&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b43fd7cc1f4bbc9e3a969a1fd01194602a227e21 https://rl.bloat.cat/preview/pre/k7zsc1nls7af1.jpeg?width=19... This does make it a bit more suspicious. It seems unlikely they coincidentally used gen AI placeholders only for the one case where it’s absurdly obvious.
    • viraptor 11mo ago
      Sorry for the... clicko? Thanks for posting the right one.
  • Alex2037 11mo ago
    man, a reddit clone that reads exactly like reddit. what's the point, even?
    • latexr 11mo ago
      > what's the point, even? Learning. From the website: > I started it on January 13, 2023, to learn something new and improve my GNU/Linux skills. https://bloat.cat/about/ https://bloat.cat/about/ Also, not relying on a single service for one thing is a good thing, as Reddit itself demonstrated when they closed off API access.
      • Alex2037 11mo ago
        [flagged]
• wolvesechoes 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• Devasta 11mo ago
  Excellent news. A blanket ban is the way to go on this, people trying to muddy the waters professing they just have nuanced opinions know what they are doing... it's only a horse armour pack, it doesn't affect gameplay, you don't have to use it, you won't notice if it's not there...
• anotheryou 11mo ago
  Ironic ally at some point it will just be anti-indy.
• torginus 11mo ago
  Rather than going into a huge rant about this, let me just give a quick anecdote. It used to be there were tons of websites, like textures.com, which curated a huge database of textures, usable by art professionals and hobbyists alike. Some of it was free, others you had to pay for, both generally speaking, it wasn't too expensive, and if you picked up 3d modeling as a hobby, you could produce pretty decent results without spending a dime. Then came the huge companies (you know which ones) which slurped up all these websites, and turned them into these SaaS monstrosities, with f2p mechanics. Textures were no longer free, but you had to pay in 'tokens' which you got from a subscription, which pushed you into opaque pricing models, bundling subscriptions, accidental yearly signups with cancellation fees, you know the drill. Then came AI, which is somehow fair use, and instead of having to pay for that stuff, you could ask SD to generate a tiling rock texture for you. Is this blatant copyrightwashing? I'd argue yes. But in this case, does copyright uphold any morally supportable princible, or does it help artists get paid? F no.
• reactordev 11mo ago
  This is a travesty. Where winds meet uses LLMs, yet everyone seems to love that. Wtf. More and more AAA games are going to have AI. Whether it’s AI content, AI dialogue, AI driven storytelling, or AI driven animation. Having game of the year title stripped over some texture use is some next level petty BS.
• mlok 11mo ago
  "While the assets in question were patched out, it still goes against the regulations we have in place. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards" Looks like "regulations nitpicking". In the end it doesn't represent the players best interests.
• Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
  The game won GOTY on its merits. Then the AI disclosure came out and it got stripped. If AI use produces obviously inferior work, how did it win in the first place? Seems like the objection is to the process, not the result. Doubly so if the usage was de minimis. I think it's the artists, not the tools, that make the art. Overuse of anything is gauche; but I am confident that beautiful things can be made with almost any tool, in the hands of a tasteful artist.
  • fooqux 11mo ago
    > I think it's the artists, not the tools, that make the art. I've never liked this argument. If AI is a tool, then having my own personal woodworker on staff makes me a woodworker too.
    • drysart 11mo ago
      I've never liked the argument that there's some imaginary line between the acceptibility of AI as a tool for creating art and Photoshop/Krita/Procreate/etc as a tool for creating art. Rubbing a brush on a canvas was good enough for the renaissance masters, why are we collectively okay with modern "artists" using "virtual brushes" and trivializations of the expressive experience like "undo" when it's not "real art" because they're leaning so heavily on the uncaring unthinking machine and the convenience in creation it offers rather than suffering through the human limitations that the old masters did? Are photographers not artists too then, because they're not actually creating, just instead capturing a view of what's already there? The usual response to this is some trite response about how AI is 'different' because you're 'just' throwing prompts at it and its completely creating the output itself -- as if it's inconceivable that there might be someone who doesn't just shovel out raw outputs from an AI and call it 'art' and is instead actually using it in a contributatory role on a larger composition that they, themselves, as a human, are driving and making artistic decisions on. E33 is a perfect example here. Is the artistic merit of the overall work lessened by it having used AI in part of its creation? Does anyone really, truly believe that they abdicated their vision on the overall work to machines? Just because someone can drag and drop to draw a circle in an image editing app instead of using their own talent and ability to freehand it instead doesn't mean what they then go on to do with that circle isn't artistic.
• spankibalt 11mo ago
  Correct decision. Skidmarks were detected to be present and it wasn't sabotage or somesuch. That means no award as skidmarks are considered so unprofessional at that particular award that, at this point, there's a rule against them.
• smusamashah 11mo ago
  This is a bit ironic in a way that video games in particular have been using "AI" since the beginning.
• fxwin 11mo ago
  I would consider myself pretty embedded in the gaming space, and I hadn't heard of the "Indie Game Awards" before yesterday. Last year's award show has <100k views on youtube, and the first article mentioning this (insider-gaming.com's) is written by one of the judges involved. I'll leave it up to the reader to judge how much of this is genuine and how much is jumping the twitter bandwagon to boost the award show's popularity.
  • HelloUsername 11mo ago
    > I would consider myself pretty embedded in the gaming space, and I hadn't heard of the "Indie Game Awards" before yesterday Very curious to hear what channels you follow and how often per week. My RSS feed was spammed by it this and previous years
    • kryptiskt 11mo ago
      That was probably The Game Awards[0], which is a big deal. I guess whoever is behind Indie Game Awards sees the name confusion as a feature rather than a bug. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_Awards_2025
      • kibwen 11mo ago
        I'm not trying to defend "The Indie Game Awards", which I also have never heard of, but The Game Awards are universally acknowledged to be a joke, and always have been. By runtime, it's 80% soulless, samey trailers for AAA games, 10% Imagine Dragons, 5% rooting for that coked-up clarinet player on the edge of the orchestra, and 5% Jeff Keighley rapid-firing off the winners of made-up award categories in under five seconds each.
        • ffsm8 11mo ago
          There was no judgement in his comment. He just pointed out (correctly) that the game awards that were being spoken of everywhere for the last few weeks were not the one related to this article. I on the other hand will add a judgement to this discussion: if you consider the game awards a joke, which is the by far most watched event in gaming, eclipsing (by viewer count) other entertainment events in sports such as the NBA finals... You've certainly got "interesting" opinions.
• dragonelite 11mo ago
  When it comes to AI im more of a luddite at the moment, things change like every 6 months when it comes to prompting the models. But i don't mind people using AI it's their own choice, the focus then just becomes in the curation skill of the individual, team, company etc of the generated AI output. So taking away the award is kind of weak given people enjoyed the game.
  • Majromax 11mo ago
    > When it comes to AI im more of a luddite at the moment, things change like every 6 months when it comes to prompting the models. [...] So taking away the award is kind of weak given people enjoyed the game. To nitpick: the independent game awards are the Luddites here. The Luddites were a protest movement, not just a group of people unfamiliar with technology. In the historical context that's apparently become appropriate again, Luddites violently protested the disruptive introduction of new automation in the textile industry that they argued led to reduced wages, precarious employment, and de-skilling.
    • ares623 11mo ago
      What happened to the Luddites? Did they end up upskilling and living happily ever after?
• andersa 11mo ago
  This isn't even an indie game, with funding rivaling major studios, what are we doing?
  • jajuuka 11mo ago
    Is indie music no longer indie if they sell really well? Is an indie film no longer indie if it gets too many awards? This kind of redefinition of indie as "poor people" is ahistorical and unhelpful. Indie means independent of a major studio. Which they are.
    • andersa 10mo ago
      If your studio has enough resources that it could easily be its own publisher, the definition "independent from a publisher" is no longer of much use. It's also wrong: this project did have a publisher and various other investment in it. The founders of this studio come from rich family backgrounds, to think they have anything in common with what the average person understands as an "indie game" developer is laughable. For example, they supposedly rented an office to work in, in a building owned by the founder's father's real estate firm, of course. Projects like these used to be called AA games. It's a fantastic game, it doesn't have to be indie to be good.
• peacebeard 11mo ago
  To help prevent confusion: Clair Obcur was not stripped of its record-breaking 9 awards at the Game Awards. The Indie Game Awards, despite sounding similar to The Game Awards, is an unrelated organization that holds their awards the same week. They are small and this is their second year.
• jagoff 11mo ago
  [flagged]
• Verdex 11mo ago
  My objection to LLMs is the same that I had for TDD. There's all these people saying that you just gotta try it, but when I do, the effect is lesser than just using my preexisting skills. Oh, it's not for you? Wrong, here's some tautological or contradictory or poetic or nonsensical advice that'll be 'the wrong way' a week from now. Does TDD and LLMs have a kernel of utility in them, yeah, I don't see why not. But what the majority of people are saying doesn't seem to be true and what the minority of people I can actually see using them 'for reals' are doing just doesn't applicable to anything I care about. With that in mind, the only thing less real to me than a tool that I have to vibe with at a social zeitgeist level to see benefits from is an award when I already have major financial and industrial success. Half the people in my team has played the game. For months all I would hear about w.r.t. games was how this game was smashing milestones and causing the entire industry to do some soul searching or putting their fingers in their ears. I'm sure they can console themselves from having lost this award with their piles of money. [An LLM did help me with a cryptography api that was pretty confusing, but I still had to problem solve that one because it got a "to bytes" method wrong. So... once in a blue moon acceleration for things I'm unfamiliar with, maybe.]
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• SonnyTark 11mo ago
  As an indie game developer the idiots who made this decision do not represent us and are completely detached from actual game production over the last 3 years. For those who might care, we use generative AI as much as possible in every way possible without compromising our vision, this includes sound, art, animation, and programming. These are often edited or entirely redone (effectively placeholders). It's part of the process, similar to using procedural art generation tools like geometry nodes in Blender or fluid sim particles generators. And btw, both UE5 and Unity now have gen AI features (and addons) that all developers can and will use.
• avaer 11mo ago
  We should probably strip the Indie Game Awards of their awards show because the accountant used ChatGPT. If they want to ban AI from their show that is their perogative, but considering that every nominee probably used AI somewhere (I'd bet money on this), this feels like blatantly dishonest posturing.
• spankibalt 11mo ago
  > "Generating placeholder assets is completely acceptable, etc." Not if it's against the rule. They got caught with skidmarks. And while the "Ackshually, those skidmarks are just placeholders"-defense may elicit a few cheap laughs, it doesn't matter if you follow the rule to its logical conclusion. Any possible deception in such cases comes on top of it. As it always has; that doesn't change just because you found a new plaything (LLMs) in the box.
• noio 11mo ago
  As an indie developer, I take much more issue with E33 falling under the “Indie” category than them using AI.
• Kim_Bruning 11mo ago
  There's an interesting question about scope. The IGA FAQ states, in its entirety on this topic: "Games developed using generative AI are strictly ineligible for nomination." [1] Sandfall probably interpreted this reasonably: no AI assets in the shipped product. They say they stripped out AI placeholders before release (and patched the ones they missed). But the IGA is reading it strictly: any use during development disqualifies. If that's the standard, it gets interesting. DLSS and OptiX are trained neural networks in an infrastructure-shaped raincoat—ML models generating pixels that were never rendered. If you used Blender Cycles with OptiX viewport denoising while iterating on your scenes, you "developed using generative AI." By a strict reading, any RTX-enabled development pipeline is disqualifying. I wonder if folks have fully thought this through. [1] https://www.indiegameawards.gg/faq https://www.indiegameawards.gg/faq (under "Game Eligibility")
  • Filligree 11mo ago
    Before people chime in to claim "That isn't what we meant"... DLSS and Cycles denoising are, well, denoising. It's the same process as denoising in Stable Diffusion, essentially, and was trained in the same way.
  • starkparker 11mo ago
    Nobody's probably thought this through, but if I had to guess, the first revision to the rule will be "no _assets_ generated with gen AI" because the most upset parties about gen AI use in gamedev are asset creatives who create textures, models, and audio, perform music and voice acting, etc. Upscaling technologies are transformative but post-processing. The uproar isn't over what happens in the render pipeline but in the creative process. Same reason why auto-LoD generation wouldn't and hasn't pissed anyone off: it's not generating LoDs of a mesh that's problematic, it's generating the source model that an artist would create.
  • pseudalopex 11mo ago
    > Sandfall probably interpreted this reasonably: no AI assets in the shipped product. Developed and shipped are different words. > But the IGA is reading it strictly You meant they meant it strictly? They wrote the policy.
• journal 11mo ago
  I wish they had CRUD application awards.
• _23sd 11mo ago
  Gamer social movements always burn bright at first, then die when they demand too much purity to reconcile with the fundamental truths: people want to make games and, when they're good, people want to play them. Trying to stop people from using (even experimenting with!) new tools is doomed, just like the old attempts to boycott games over their business models or their creators' politics/sexuality/whatever.
• akimbostrawman 11mo ago
  deserved it wasn't even indie either
• mvkel 11mo ago
  This is like disqualifying Banksy because they use stencils
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• internet_friend 11mo ago
  Couldn't care less if a great game is made completely by AI, assets, code, and all
• internet_friend 11mo ago
  Couldn't care less if a great game is made completely by AI; assets, code, and all.
• constantcrying 11mo ago
  Really makes it clear how ridiculous the mania about AI usage is. The game is great and there is absolutely nothing in it that would suggest to the player that AI was used for anything. Putting essentially arbitrary limitation on which tools game developers are allowed to use is just nonsensical. Yes, the output of AI models can be really bad, but then a game obviously does not deserve an award. Especially for an indie game, with limited resources, AI can be a huge force multiplier. Gatekeeping awards based on these meaningless characteristics seems just very strange.
• rcarmo 11mo ago
  This is the kind of rule that won’t hold water in the very near future. It’s going to be impossible to do certain kinds of things at scale without AI, and media production is a very competitive field. As long as the quality bar is held high and there are professional artists curating its use, I see no problem at all in using AI as a tool.
• perryizgr8 11mo ago
  The reason I hate AI generated code is because it's low quality and a pain to review. Similarly, AI generated images and videos are also low quality and not worth paying attention to. If a game is well made and people enjoy it then what's the problem with utilising AI generated code or assets? What's the objective?
• matty22 11mo ago
  “Whoops! We forgot to disclose that we ripped off thousands of other artists when we made our game. But don’t worry, it was only for placeholder stuff!”
• gguncth 11mo ago
  This policy will be in place for about 2-3 more years at which point it will be excluding almost everything, at which point it will be reversed
• Yizahi 11mo ago
  I dislike LLM-slop too, but this is clearly a situation where enforcement of a policy is impossible. If those two new winners were using LLMs to generate code or media, we wouldn't know and neither would awards committee. This can only end up as a tool to selectively ban contenders, devaluing the whole award idea in the process.
• somat 11mo ago
  The real reason Clair Obscure should not have received indie game of the year in the first place is that it was developed by Sandfall interactive and published by Kepler interactive and as such is not an independent game.
• altairprime 11mo ago
  Tangentially, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46369590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46369590