Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may have won big in The Game Awards, walking away with nine major trophies, including Game of the Year. But it seems that momentum has hit a snag at the Indie Game Awards. The IGA has officially pulled multiple awards from Sandfall Interactive’s France RPG after ruling that it violated its strict policy against the use of generative AI.
In a statement shared after the IGA 2025 premiere, the organization said it takes a ‘hard stance on the use of gen AI’ both during the nomination process and throughout the ceremony. According to the IGA, when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was submitted, Sandfall Interactive confirmed that no generative AI had been used during development.
That changed on the day of the awards show, when the developer confirmed that generative AI art had, in fact, been used at some point in the process. As a result, the committee voted to retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards and reassign them to the next highest-ranked nominees. Sorry We’re Closed now takes Debut Game, while Blue Prince has been named IGA’s GOTY, with acceptance speeches set to be shared in the new year.
On the day of the premiere, Sandfall Interactive did in fact confirm that Gen AI was used in the making of Expedition 33. Despite agreeing that no Gen AI was used in the making of the game when it was submitted to us for consideration, unfortunately, that’s not the case.
That clearly goes against the regulations we have in place and disqualifies it from nomination. So with that, the IGA’s Nomination Committee is officially retracting ‘Debut Game’ and ‘Game of the Year’ from Sandfall Interactive.
However, Sandfall Interactive has previously addressed its use of AI-related tools following an interview published by the Spanish media El País way back on July 19. The team clarified that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does not contain any generative AI-created assets in its final version. Team members briefly experimented with AI for making placeholder textures, but they were quickly removed within five days of launch.
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.
That context has fueled backlash to IGA’s decision, as some argued the ruling ignores how limited and short-lived the AI usage was. ExtendedSpikeProtein wrote on Reddit, “Absolutely nothing, and people claiming otherwise are morons. That kind of usage is exactly what AI is for. And yeah, forgetting to remove one thing can reasonably happen. Mistakes happen.”
Others questioned whether the IGA’s zero-tolerance policy is realistic as development tools evolve, especially in the indie scene. “This might be a pretty tough stance to uphold if more indie devs start using AI during development,” Broshida’s post reads. “It seems to be infesting everything atm.”
Several reactions also focused on the timing of the disqualification. “The single piece of generated AI in the game had already been replaced. Sandfall acknowledged it already in July,” noted Material_Ad_554. “An odd choice to cite it now to revoke the reward.”
One longer post was more critical. It points out that the AI placeholder issue had been public knowledge for months before Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was nominated and won multiple awards.
“E33 is released in April and get immediately caught using AI placeholders, they patch it out and apologize, […] they win 9/12 of [The Game Awards] awards, people spend the following week frothing at the mouth and making every excuse possible to discredit E33 as an indie game,” wrote OkNectarine9239, clearly annoyed.
“Six One nominates E33 with their AI usage already being public information… lets them win several awards… and THEN makes a huge show over disqualifying them. And we’re supposed to act like this is perfectly normal and not some weird performative BS? I don’t care about award shows of any kind, […] but this 100% looks like it was done with ulterior motives.”
Nevertheless, some online commenters still insist on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 team not being transparent enough about its generative AI usage. For the Indie Game Awards, that nuance ultimately doesn’t matter. The organization says any confirmed use of generative AI is enough to make a game ineligible — regardless of scope or whether those assets shipped.
