344
Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage
(insider-gaming.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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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 AI responsibly?" not "Was AI used?"
Maybe what we should be advocating for is transparency with these decisions?
Asking whether the project uses AI responsibly means you either need to define responsibly in a way that people can apply objectively, noting that everyone will have opinions about whether it's a good definition. Or you leave it undefined and the answer basically means nothing.
Cool... Generative AI used for placeholders during development that are replaced by actual artist work for the release is the definition of responsibly.
Given these assets were replaced within days of release here... Definitely seems like placeholders that were just missed during the final checks before release.
A semantics discussion isnt required to know that to do something responsibly, that it means to act in good faith and to be confidently informed enough to do so. We measure responsibility by the absence of harm.
Unless the model that they used was trained entirely on artwork that was public domain, creative commons, licensed or owned, then its basically certain that it wasn't used responsibly.
You cannot make something on a foundation of someone else's exploitation and be considered responsible, ethical, original or independent.
They used AI for placeholder art.
It could’ve been literally Mickey Mouse downloaded from google images and still be fine. None of it was supposed to be shipped.
Big AAA studios have a person or team whose only job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. Smaller studios don’t.
Sure, they could have used Mickey Mouse, a gray box, or a low poly model whipped in Blender in 5 minutes... After all, that's what people have been doing for like 30 years. None of those things would have required the mass industrialized exploitation of millions of people's work and culture. None of those things would add value to some tech bros business.
As a side note, something tells me that if they had used Mickey for their placeholder art it wouldn't have "accidentally" found its way into the final game.
Plus... how do I know they didn't use AI as the basis for all of the art in their game? For all I know, AI was central to setting the aesthetic of this game due to being at the very front end of their production pipeline. Hard to know, especially when they are so sketchy about it. (At least Larian were bold/stupid enough to admit that the concepts for their game start with AI.)
It cheapens the game and undermines whatever work they actually did.
Calling your game "indie" when you're actively exploiting artists to make it is like calling your Etsy store "diy" despite knowing that it's a bunch of Chinese dropped shipped junk made by children in a sweatshop. It's disingenuous at best.
So instead of "Did you pirate this game?", the question should be "Did you pirate this game, responsibly?"
Well, I just pirate games. Fuck responsibility.
Putting aside the massive ethical and legal implications of blatantly exploiting human culture and works in the name of corporate profits...
I really hope they aren't expecting us mere mortals to pay for AI generated games and media.
Because if I end up losing my job to a robot that was trained on my own stolen words, images, code and sounds, paying $70 for some slop is right down at the bottom of the list of things I want to do.
Exactly, they can't be angry if we don't pay anymore.
Sure, that works too.
I could think of of plenty examples, but a good use for pirating would be Disco Elysium - the publishers stole the IP of the creators unjustly, so it would be cobsidered by many ethical to not purchase the game and instead pirate it and donate a comfortable amount to the actual creators patreons. You are actuallu combating theft, in this instance.
But of course it would not be responsible to pirate most indie games