Submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to games@lemmy.world
https://insider-gaming.com/indie-game-awards-disqualifies-clair-obscur-expedition-33-gen-ai/
This is fucking stupid. There’s no AI assets in the final game, and it was used for placeholders during development.
I dislike AI for a lot of reasons, but this is massively overblown. The genie is out of the bottle and there’s no putting it back. This is right up there with artists airbrushing, photoshop, and so on. People are going to use the tools available if it leads to quicker development cycles to get a product out.
This is fucking stupid.
It’s stupid because the game has already received a stack of awards a mile high. Nobody seriously cares about this. Nobody’s sales will be hurt in any meaningful capacity. It’s a dumb awards show, not the FCC.
People are going to use the tools available if it leads to quicker development cycles to get a product out.
I think this “placeholder art” is a silly line to draw. But the high profile of the game makes it a ripe target to make a statement.
If you really don’t want to reward people for “quicker development” over the human touch, might as well pick a game everyone already bought and highlight folks who did their dev work organically
Good.
Seems a bit excessive.
There’s AI slop games, the new breed of asset flips.
And then there’s “a few of our textures were computer generated.”
For stuff like dirt/stone/brick/etc textures I’m less strict for the use of generative stuff. I even thinking having an artist make the “core” texture and then using an AI to fill out the texture across the various surfaces to make it less repetitive over a large area isn’t a problem for me.
Like, I agree that these things gernally are ethically questionable with how they are trained, but you can train them on ethically sourced data and doing so could open up the ability to fill out a game world without spending a ton of time, leaving the actual artists more time to work on the important set pieces than the dirt road connecting them.
And giving studios like this an edge over AAAs. It it’s the start of negating their massive manpower advantage.
In other words, the anti-corpo angle seems well worth the “cost” of a few generations. That’s the whole point of AI protest, right? It really against the corps enshittifying stuff.
Who made the textures or took the photos that them AI generated ones were derived from, do they get a cut? That justification is even more bizarre now, considering the tools we have to photoscan.
Also what about AI code tools? Like if they use cursor to help write some code does that disqualify them?
If you do that and proceed to say “No we didn’t use any AI tools”. Then yes, that should be a disqualification.
“When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.”
Yes. Shit’s buggy enough as it is, infect it with this crap and it’s outright malware.
Yeah.
A lot of devs may do it personally, even if it’s not a company imperative (which it shouldn’t be).
People have made it excessive due to turning AI into a modern witch hunt. Maybe if people had a more nuanced take than “all AI bad” companies could be more open about how they use AI.
I can guarantee that if E33 came out with the AI disclaimer it would’ve been far more controversial and probably less successful. And technically they should have an AI label because they did use Gen AI in the development process even if none of it was supposed to end up in the final game.
But we can’t have companies being honest because people can’t be normal.
“All genAI bad” is a nuanced take. When you look at genAI from a moral, ethical, or sociopolitical perspective it always demonstrates itself to be a net evil.
The core technology is predicated on theft, the data centers powering it are harmful economically and to surrounding communities, it is gobbled up by companies looking to pay less to profit more, and it’s powered by a bubble ripe for bursting which will wreak havoc on our economy.
GenAI is indefensible as a technology, and the applications it may have for any tangible benefit can probably be accomplished by ML systems not built on the back of the LLM monster. We should all be protesting its use in all things.
Its not surprising when even people who like AI are now being affected by consumer hardware prices that is leading to shift in previously positive perception of it.
People are being affected by it now on the consumer side so being hard to ignore its affects now. Gone from a philosophical difference to actually actual tangible consequences.
Let them have their award with their own rules.
I have the same feeling about Kojima's and Vincke's latest comments on AI. Am I supposed to get mad at every single person who said they used/plan to use AI for something? I'd be as outraged as the average Fox News viewer, and it would be impossible to be taken seriously. I still won't be using AI myself (fuck surveillance state AI) and I'd be making every effort to encourage others not to use it, but there's no point in burning bridges and falling for rage bait.
They're creative people who care about the craft and care about the teams in their employ, which gives their statements weight, where some Sony/Microsoft/EA executive making an identical statement has none.
I understand the principle. Even if E33 is not “slop,” people should fear a road that leads to dependence on “surveillance state AI” like OpenAI.
That being said, I think a lot of people don’t realized how cheap and commoditized it’s getting. It’s not a monoculture, it’s not transcending. This stuff is racing to the bottom to become dumb tools, and honestly that’s something that makes a lot of sense for a game studio dev to want.
And E33 is clearly not part of the “Tech Bro Evangalism” camp. They made a few textures, with a tool.
Give it another 5 years maybe and local self-trainable models and alternative versions of it will be available that won’t have all the theft problems, surveillance problems and other issues. The tech is new and mainly controlled by giant companies right now.
It’s not like the tech is going to forever exist in a vacuum in the exact state. It’s in nothing ever does. Makes it doubly silly to get mad over a tool.
At the end of the day it's all about the quality in my opinion.
The entire game could be written by ONE passionate person who is awesome at writing the story and the code, but isn't good at creating textures and has no money for voice actors - in which case said textures and all the voices would be AI generated, then hand retouched to ensure quality. That would still be a good game because obvious passion went into the creation of it, and AI was used as a tool to fill out gaps of the sole debeloper's expertise.
A random software house automating a full on pipeline that watches various trends on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, etc., and chains together various genAI models to create slopware games by the dozens, on the other hand, is undefendable. There's no passion, there's no spirit, there's just greed and abuse of technology.
Differentiation between the two is super important.
So is the source.
If they’re paying a bunch of money to OpenAI for mega text prompt models, they are indeed part of the slop problem. It will also lead to an art “monoculture,” Big Tech dependence, code problems, all sorts of issues.
Now, if they’re using open weights models, or open weights APIs, using a lot of augmentations and niche pipelines like, say, hand sketches to 3D models, that is different. That’s using tools.
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
Sauce: …elpais.com/…/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-ho…
Not exactly a massive AI slop problem, right?
Can we put our collective pitchforks away for this case at least?
This is the same use case that people are currently up in arms against Larian for
Not quite. Larian also wants to use it for concept art, which is not the same thing as placeholder assets. To give you a bit of context, the standard for placeholder textures at the software development companies I worked so far has mostly been “vaguely fitting images you found on Google”.
Good. Burn both companies to the ground. Set them as an example.
Can we put our collective pitchforks away for this case at least?
NO.
My pitchfork stays sharpened and at the ready until this stupid bubble pops.
The AI was used for background assets that they failed to remove but patched quickly after. It’s not as egregious as the headline makes it out to be.
It’s not a bubble though. That’s like waiting for the internet bubble to pop back in the 90s. AI will be around from now on, just not as such an in your face way. It will eventually become ubiquitous, just like many other pieces of tech.
Lol you think people on lemmy are going to put away their AI pitchforks?
I don’t like billion dollar corporations, and I’d be fine to stop and leave that be all the context, but I also don’t like them using technology to manufacture truth while polluting the earth to do it.
So tell your coders to give you a tune up, the damage control algorithm didn’t pan out.
Not in general but for this at least? Maybe?
When they understand the context behind this particular case, yes.
Because so many people are blowing up without reading the article. They were not disqualified for having AI in the game, they were disqualified for not disclosing AI had been used in development.
“The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself,” the statement reads. “When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. “In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination.”
Additionally, here is another article where they are clarifying HOW it was used.
…elpais.com/…/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-ho…
Following the publication of this article, Sandfall Interactive wishes to provide the following clarifications. The studio states that it was in contact with El País on April 25 - three months prior to this publication. During these exchanges, Sandfall Interactive indicated that it had used a limited number of pre-existing assets, notably 3D assets sourced from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. None of these assets were created using artificial intelligence. Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative Al-created assets in the game. When the first Al 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.
TL;DR: They experimented with Generative AI when it first came out, used some of the results as temporary assets that were always intended to be temporary. They still got in to the final product because QA missed them, which was promptly fixed in a patch. Indie Game Awards disqualified them for failing to disclose this in the first place.
Key takeaways:
Make of that what you will. I personally think this is being blown out of proportion. They made a mistake and have openly corrected themselves. Good for them.
I don’t have much if an opinion on the rest of your argument but:
probably before most people started realizing it was being trained off stolen artwork as well as a lot of the other problems with AI.
This is the equivalent to those Tesla owners pasting “I bought this before Elon went crazy” stickers. Especially the creative industries were very quick to point out the problematic part of stuff like Dall-E and stable diffusion. Generative Graphical AI has never been approved of by the gamedevs I know.
Hadn’t thought of it that way. Good point.
Stable diffusion and midjourney were supposedly trained fairly. That is the only reason art teams would even use Ai for rapid prototyping.
Was not aware those two were trained fairly. Sadly I didn’t see anything on what AI tool they used so not sure how that would affect things.
They were disqualified for failing to disclose the AI usage, not just for using AI at all.
To me, this is worse.
We are getting closer and closer to not being able to tell the difference between AI and reality. This lying about the use of it or hiding the use of it is a bad fucking idea.
They didn’t disclose it because there was no AI in the final product. The AI was for placeholder textures, which were replaced by real artists’ work as they were made. Some of the AI textures slipped through the cracks on release day, but a week 1 patch removed all traces of the AI before anyone even realized it was AI.
IMO this looks bad on the awards show, because the final product didn’t have any AI. And the production team was proactive in ensuring it didn’t have any AI before any kind of public backlash ever happened. Once they realized the issue, they issued a patch to fix it on their own, without needing to be pushed into it by public pressure. That’s what a company should do, and it shows that the devs really cared about their game.
The reason they didn’t disclose it as being used in the creation of the game is probably because no AI was used in the ultimate development. It’s an artist who uses AI to generate concepts and inspiration using AI in their artwork, even if everything in the end is hand crafted and doesn’t resemble any of the generated images?
One thing we need to take into account going forward too is that AI will inevitably be used for things like texture maps and environmental generation. Things that have been randomly generated with algorithms. In a year it’s going to be nearly impossible to say no game can have any AI used at all, unless you want the pool of potential to be incredibly small.
I mean. Usage of AI should be disclosed. But it feels more Like they’re trying to take it down. This has a taste of jealousy to me.
Or I don’t get the full picture Here.
Ya it has its place for sure, for example I’d rather have rpg conversations with an AI NPC than some prescripted repeated nonsense. Maybe that’s just me though.
It might not just be you but there’s still a sizable portion of the player base that disagrees.
I may be somewhere in the middle for that specific example.
I’m sure all of the recently out of work artists and programmers are heartbroken over another game that paid for gen AI instead of hiring them. I’m sure the AI company executives just needed the money more. Fuck whomever decided to AI in the Clair project management team. You could have actually deserved that awards. Good on the Indie Game Awards for actually supporting indie developers
Did you even read? They used it for placeholders before replacing them with textures created by artists.
They didn’t use it for placeholders (which wouldn’t excuse them anyway, if you want a placeholder you can pay an artist to make it).
They got caught using it in production and came up with the placeholder excuse (which no one who’s ever seen a placeholder texture would fall for) on the spot, throwing the QA team under the bus to try to cover what is clearly a systemic problem with the company.
Considering the backlash, maybe it was silly of them to use it for placeholders.
I kinda feel like Clair Obscur is sort of stretching the definition of indie game.
I guess _technically _ it is.
I’m not saying every game needs to be made in someone’s garage and take 12 years to make, but it sounds like this game was completely funded by Kepler and parts of the game were outsourced to other companies. Sandfall is made up of experienced developers from places like Ubisoft. Kinda feels like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise made their own movie with funding from a lesser known subdivision of Warner Bros, outsourced SFX to 300 animators, and called it indie because they filmed it with 10 people.
I do think Clair Obscur is a fantastic game and deserves to be Game of the Year (aside from the AI use). Sandfall and Kepler did a great job with a reported budget of $10M(!) and I especially appreciate what Kepler is doing to support the gaming industry.
I guess I see the point of the award to inspire people to believe they shouldn’t give up on their dreams by recognizing small teams making games outside of the traditional industry. I just don’t feel like Sandfall qualifies.
In the end, it’s not my award and they can give it to whoever they want!
It's not indie, it had the full support of a publisher. Indie is a handful of people making a game with their own money, not getting a millions of dollars in investment from a publisher.
I agree with your take. The definition of what an “indie” is is very vague and subjective, but given the budget and resources and circumstances of E33’s development it seems outside the scope of what seems to be the “spirit of the award”.
Blue Prince should have gotten the award to begin with.
Well the definition for indie is independently published. Its not vague in its self, but the way people have started to use the word have changed its meaning to from something well defined to something more feeling based consept. I personally dont like it. People counted game like Dave the Diver to be an indie game when it had huge company Nexon publishing it.
If followed by the original meaning of the word Blue Prince is not indie game either. It was published by Raw Fury, but Baldurs gate 3 would be indie as Larian published it.
Indie as a word is like AI. It does not follow its original definition and because people have became used to misusing the word it has became the new norm.
A DBD creator I like made a video about this topic, and the degradation of the term.
The Second Wind folks put out a video yesterday about what defines an indie game. Short answer: these days pretty much it’s just vibes
They replaced the art later, but shouldn’t the bar be high like this? Otherwise, the caution won’t be there. It also could be abused, like games only getting adjusted post-launch if a certain measure of success hits. Plus the final product is not the only part of matters in the was-AI-used discussion, it is also about the process. If AI is the product of stolen human artwork being fed into a machine, and then that machine is used during creation, then AI has been used in the process that led to the final product no less than the concept art that may not be seen in game but was important in steering the ship.
Maybe someone can share there thoughts though. I’m still formulating mine and this is where I am at the moment.
There is no use of Gen AI in an indie game that should be tolerated. Period.
That’s just not going to happen.
Nearly any game with more than a few people involved is going have someone use cursor code completion, or use one for reference or something. They could pull in libraries with a little AI code in them, or use an Adobe filter they didn’t realize is technically GenAI, or commission an artist that uses a tiny bit in their workflow.
If we’re banning games over how they make concept art… I’m not sure how you expect to enforce that. How could you possibly audit that?
Are you putting coding tools in this bucket?
They didn’t just replace the art later. It was intended to be placeholder art from the beginning. And was replaced 5 days after release. That tells me that they just missed replacing those temporary assets among tens of thousands of assets before release.
Using GenAI for something temporary that’s not intended to be final seems like the perfect use case for it. Especially on a small team where artist time is much better spent working on the final assets.
No AI is the product of any theft. If we’re talking about piracy, piracy is NOT theft. I thought we all agreed on this already.
I was just about to buy this game too
Not now.
Fuck AI.
They used it for background assets but patched it quickly. It’s not as egregious as it sounds.
I feel like this is virtue signaling more than actually addressing a real problem with Clair Obscur.
Welcome to the internet. No one knows each other, no one considers context, no one reads past the headline, everyone makes snap judgements based on half understood heuristics, and then rushes to the comments to grandstand. A job that could be trivially done by AI, and almost certainly is, but instead we’ll all pretend like we’re the last bastion of human sanity.
Yeah.
Maybe a technically too. The rule said “no AI,” and E33 used AI, though in hindsight making such a hard restriction with the intent of filtering slop games was probably unwise.
Like that the story is bifurcated and that the combat in the late game is parry or die?
That and attention seeking through controversy
Clair Obscur is not indie by any definition of the term. I don’t even know why it was even considered at all.
Sandfall *interactive is independent from its publisher Kepler. Many of the other games Kepler produces are typically considered indie - why not Expedition 33? BG3 is “Indie” but this definition
While Hades, Hollow Knight, and Celeste being both owned and published by the same company are not indie.
So… idk what definition everyone is using. Seems to be whatever suits their agenda at the time of award.
The fact that they were there in the first place is a problem.
Why does a game that has been published by some other company calls itself “indie”???
The term itself is becoming more and more meaningless with the passing time.
It has to be more nuanced than “self-published”, otherwise everything EA craps out is “indie”.
The definition of “indie game” is a case where there is no easy, clear line to draw in the sand.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched with what some suspected to be AI-generated textures that, as it clarified to El País, were then replaced with custom assets in a swift patch five days after release.
Fuck using Gen AI to replace human-made art, and fair enough for pulling the award, but I do think it’s worth making it clear exactly how much of the art is/was AI. And the answer is, very little at launch and none currently.
So if you make a noise mesh texture is that hand crafted?
AI isnt needed at all, we didnt need it in the past to create art. And with all the tools and knowledge available online, for free, theres even less reason we need it these days.
I've never pirated a game, but if developers are going to use pirated content to make a game, they cant be mad when we pirate their game.
wait it used genAI? It’s coming off my wishlist… :/
It’s a AA game if anything
Horrid article.
From the IGA’s statement:
[…] the use of gen AI art in production […] does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place.
Just a note, seems to just be in production. Possibly placeholders?
Reminds me of the old days, developers all the time put in copyrighted assets as placeholders. Rarely they get into the final release and cause trouble but it was fairly common practice.
Can someone help me to understand the difference between Generative AI and procedural generation (which isn’t something that’s relevant for Expedition 33, but I’m talking about in general).
Like, I tend to use the term “machine learning” for the legit stuff that has existed for years in various forms, and “AI” for the hype propelled slop machines. Most of the time, the distinction between these two terms is pretty clean, but this area seems to be a bit blurry.
I might be wrong, because I’ve only worked with machine learning in a biochemistry context, but it seems likely that modern procedural generation in games is probably going to use some amount of machine learning? In which case, would a developer need to declare usage of that? That feels to me like it’s not what the spirit of the rule is calling for, but I’m not sure
The only takeaway is that the Indie Game Awards’ rule is overly restrictive. Woops, one of your contracted artists used a GenAI model to generate a music playlist to set the mood while he was working on your game, you’re disqualified and the fact that you didn’t come forward with this information immediately makes you a liar. Obviously absurd. If they’re going to take a strong anti-AI stance, it should be more realistic. At some point, maybe even already, every single competitor should be disqualified but isn’t aware or forthcoming about it, so what’s the rule actually doing except rewarding dishonesty?
This feels like unecessary absolutism and fear mongeting. I am by no means an AI lover, but people shouldn’t let the worst implimentations of something cloud their judgement.
I feel the question should be “Does this project use A.I responsibly?” not “Was A.I used?”
Maybe what we should be advocating for is transparency with these decisions?
I fail to see how this isn’t a good thing?
Yes the AI usage was known about previously, yes, the game probably doesn’t really count as being an indie game, yes game awards are all genuinely terrible, but you have to take what you can get. A small victory is a still a victory.
was it an indie in the first place?
I heartily approve.
Good. It’s a decent enough game, if you like that style, but I think they won enough at the other awards.
As much as I hate to admit it, non-flagrant AI use will likely become generally accepted. The truth is that there’s a lot of content in games these days that sometimes just isn’t that important to dedicate man hours to it (Ex: Generic brick texture #431). The fact that this slipped through the cracks is proof enough.
However, overly slacking to the point the end point looks obviously AI generated with just bad art. It’s pretty much akin to just delegating to some shady third party studio that works for pennies and spits out generic, low quality stuff. This will continue to be
Ethics and copyright, are of course, different questions entirely. (In my opinion most AI provides are committing blatant AI infringement by using machines that crunch down copyrighted data and resell it back to you). But it seems like Silicon Valley’s marketing and public relations team managed to figure out the copyright one at this point. <>/
HollowNaught@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
People are saying “it’s fine because it was used in the early stages of the game for placeholder art” but that’s kind of missing the point
The problem is that they used AI and didn’t disclose it, as well as releasing the game with AI textures still in it. Yes, these textures were quickly replaced, but it’s still very concerning they weren’t upfront on how they were using it in the game making process
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
I dunno…
If I make a mock up of a cake using toxic ingredients, then throw that out and make my cake from scratch using food safe ingredients, do I need to disclose that “toxic material was used when making this cake”? I don’t think so.
Of course this kinda falls apart when they shipped with quickly replaced textures. But I also wouldn’t expect them to disclose the game as unfinished if they forgot to replace blank textures with the proper assets until just after release.
HollowNaught@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
This is less like making a new cake from scratch after disposing of the previous one, and more like making a new cake using the same unwashed cake tin and utensils
No matter what, the AI replacements would have affected how the artists made the final products as, whether they liked it or not, they had a point of reference in the form of the AI texture
Dremor@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Maybe because all AI generated assets got removed?
Honestly, as a programmer that uses extensively AI to debug, and do various tedious tasks like unit tests, I think the whole anti-AI craze of late is more bullshit than sane arguments.
It’s an invaluable tool for many cases, and as soon is it is not used to replace someone, I don’t see the problem. They where used by artists, to be used as placeholders while working on the gme, not by executives seeking to make some more bucks by not hiring anyone.
They forgot some of them in the final game? Shit happens. You cannot expect someone to go through every single texture in a game that probably got thousands, if not tenths of thousands, just to make sure none was forgotten.
Anyway, that’s blown way out of propositions, and feels more like some people trying to get views by hating on something popular than having real concerns about it. Especially since Blue Prince does use AI assets in the final product, and strangely no one bats an eye.
HollowNaught@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
This entire comment is baffling to me, in all honesty
Not before being unknowingly sold to the public
My problem with AI is its heavy usage of plagiarism and vast degree of power consumption, as well as the price hikes its caused for many computer parts
Whenever anything is attempting to make money, it should be put under the highest scrutiny. It does not matter who’s pushing it. Similarly, I find it odd that we’re assuming the inner workings of Clair Obscur’s workplace
If you replaced AI here with anything defamatory, like pictures of penises placed by an enraged employee after being fired, then even having a few would be devastating on sales. The single fact that we’re okay with a few means that, over time, that bar will likely be pushed further down the road “oh, it’s just this one character that practically never shows up” “oh, it’s just the skyboxes, they’re basically not noticeable anyway” “who cares if the early access uses AI voices? They’ll be replaced eventually!”
I assure you, AI is not popular. Studies have shown that AI is causing people more concern than excitement Not the most reputable source, but oh well
But guess what did? The Alters