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

Posted by anigbrowl 12/21/2025

Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use(www.thegamer.com)

186 points | 403 commentspage 4

ares623 12/21/2025|

Great opportunity for a new award body that allows AI use.

Ekaros 12/21/2025||

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.

YokoZar 12/21/2025|||

I hear FIFA makes new awards these days

manojlds 12/21/2025|||

Just to be clear, it's some Indie Game awards, not the main The Game Awards

citizenkeen 12/21/2025||

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 12/21/2025|||

> 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 12/21/2025|||

I don't think pro-AI was discussed. It was rather not being anti-AI.

qwertytyyuu 12/21/2025||

Oh its AI that makes not indie, not the huge funding.

theshrike79 12/21/2025|

Should indie games have a maximum budget?

Arwill 12/21/2025||

Yes. If you get 120M+ in funding, you no longer qualify to be called indie.

theshrike79 12/21/2025||

So what would the limit be in your mind? Does it include marketing?

akimbostrawman 12/21/2025||

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 12/21/2025||

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 12/21/2025||

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?

joquarky 12/22/2025||

You're feeding a sea lion.

spankibalt 12/21/2025||

> "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.

rcarmo 12/21/2025||

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.

mlok 12/21/2025||

"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.

internet_friend 12/21/2025||

Couldn't care less if a great game is made completely by AI, assets, code, and all

littlecranky67 12/21/2025||

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.

perryizgr8 12/21/2025||

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?

b3lvedere 12/21/2025|

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.

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