Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the Indie Game Awards GenAI Meltdown: Outdated Rules, Zero Due Diligence
The Indie Game Awards just handed the industry a masterclass in how not to run a show in 2025.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been stacking trophies across the board, building momentum as one of the most awarded releases of its cycle. Now the Indie Game Awards has stripped the game of its Debut Game and Game of the Year wins after confirming Sandfall Interactive used GenAI, meaning generative AI, during development. The optics are loud, but the bigger issue is not the technology. It is the awards show’s process, or lack of one.
The GenAI use was not a brand new revelation. The title launched with assets that looked like temporary AI generated placeholders, and Sandfall Interactive acknowledged GenAI use in a July interview with El País. Yet the game still got through nominations and went on to win major categories at a show that claims to enforce a strict zero GenAI standard.
That is where the Indie Game Awards looks less like an authority and more like a compliance cosplay.
The show’s own Indie Game Awards FAQ states that when the game was submitted, a representative of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no GenAI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Later, with the July interview resurfacing and Sandfall confirming GenAI use, the committee retracted the wins because any GenAI use violates the rules. Then the trophies were handed to the closest runner up: Debut
Game went to Sorry We’re Closed, and Game of the Year went to Blue Prince.
The IGAs Nomination Committee is officially retracting Debut Game and Game of the Year, awarding both categories to new recipients. Additionally, we are retracting one of the Indie Vanguard recipients. Full details can be found in our FAQ under Game Eligibility: www.indiegameawards.gg/faq
— The Indie Game Awards (@indiegameawards.gg) December 21, 2025 at 2:45 AM
[image or embed]
Here is the fundamental problem. If your rulebook is strict enough to disqualify a winner after the fact, your intake process has to be strict enough to prevent that outcome in the first place. Instead, the Indie Game Awards appears to have relied on a trust based checkbox and called it a day. No meaningful verification. No audit. No obvious screening for publicly available statements. That is not serious governance. That is a roll of the dice with a trophy attached.
And we are not buying the premise behind the rule, either.
GenAI should be acceptable, and in many cases it should be actively protected, especially when talented indie developers use it responsibly. For small teams, GenAI can be a force multiplier that helps bridge gaps in time, staffing, and budget. It can accelerate drafting, ideation, and iteration. It can help a one person creator, a 10 person studio, or a 30 person team prototype faster, communicate creative direction, and move from concept to playable reality without waiting for resources they simply do not have. That is not cheating. That is modern production.
The industry has already moved on. Almost every studio is touching AI in some form, whether for early drafts, internal tools, pipeline automation, or rapid concept exploration. Pretending GenAI is not part of game development in 2025 is the real fantasy genre. If an awards show wants relevance, it needs rules that reflect how games are actually made, not how people wish they were made.
A blanket ban on any GenAI use is not a principled stance. It is an outdated shortcut that punishes the very creators the Indie Game Awards claims to champion. It also creates a perverse incentive: teams either hide their workflow, avoid transparency, or get hit later when someone digs up an interview and the show has to scramble with an embarrassing reversal.
What should have happened instead is simple. The Indie Game Awards should have had modern disclosure standards, clear boundaries, and an eligibility framework built around accountability, not moral panic. If the concern is final asset substitution, define it. If the concern is training data ethics, require disclosure and sourcing. If the concern is human credit and labor, mandate crediting and documentation. But if the show is just going to say any GenAI use disqualifies you, while doing no serious investigation until after the trophies are handed out, then it is not an awards body. It is a reaction machine.
The other elephant in the room is the indie label itself. Nobody agrees what indie even means anymore. One person in a basement. A 20 person studio. 30 developers with publisher support. A publisher funded project marketed as indie because it sells authenticity. The definition is already messy, and the Indie Game Awards adding a rigid GenAI ban on top of that mess only increases the chaos. If the show wants to be taken seriously, it needs clearer standards on both indie classification and modern tooling, including AI.
This is not Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being a villain story. This is the Indie Game Awards showing the industry it is running outdated rules with outdated enforcement, then acting surprised when the modern pipeline does what modern pipelines do.
What is your line for award eligibility: zero GenAI no exceptions, or full disclosure with strict rules on what AI can be used for and where?
