Clair Obscur won multiple awards but used generative AI art as placeholders during production.

The Indie Game Awards revoked Clair Obscur’s Debut and Game of the Year after the AI disclosure.

IGAs reassigned the awards (Blue Prince, Sorry We’re Closed) and reignited debate on gen-AI use.

  • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    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: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-creative-revolution-how-technology-is-making-art-accessible-to-everyone.html

    Not exactly a massive AI slop problem, right?

    • kadu@scribe.disroot.org
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      16 hours ago

      One of the rules was no AI during development, they voluntarily claimed they didn’t use it.

      They used it. Sure, in a minor way, but they used it and got caught.

      The rules are the rules. Some chess events ban caffeine, we might laugh and say drinking a cup of coffee is not a big deal - but they’d be disqualified.

      • lepinkainen@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        But this is like banning someone from a chess event because they experimented with caffeine 3 years ago and accidentally left a single Nespresso pod in their bag. That they also immediately threw in the trash when they noticed

        • canofcam@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Or like they submitted a game to an award that said no AI in development, said they didn’t use AI in development, when in reality they did.

        • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          Is there a rule that chess players can’t train with caffeine?

          Of course not. It’s not at all the same.

        • astanix@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          Almoat… its like the rule said you cant have used caffeine for the past 5 years and you used some 3 years ago and then lied about it.

      • SlimePirate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 hours ago

        The rules are the rules

        This has the same validity as an argument as “I was just following orders” or “I am just doing my job” or “I told you I would hit you in five seconds, so you did know” same reasoning behind teachers that throw students out for being 5 minutes late

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 hour ago

          This has the same validity as an argument as “I was just following orders”

          Ok, reality check: we are talking about video game awards. Calm down.

          • SlimePirate@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            35 minutes ago

            That doesn’t change the claim. Following the rules for the sake of following the rules instead of understanding why they are there is a defining trait of this sheep behavior.

        • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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          1 hour ago

          If you don’t enforce rules then you don’t have rules. You should have learned that dealing with all those teachers who threw you out for being late in school.

    • Final Remix@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Right. The far bigger problem is how trash of an engine Unreal5 is, and all the forced processing making things look and run like shit. But that’s not just a Clair Obsur problem.

      • Rekorse@sh.itjust.works
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        1 hour ago

        Can I say I agree, very disappointed when I loaded up the game that I had to change so much to make it essentially playable on a high refresh rate 2k monitor. After disabling all the filters and turning off upscaling, I have it working fine but wow its like they made something beautiful and have no idea how to allow people to see it.

        After all the comparisons to Larian, I thought I’d see a more competently assembled package with Clair Obscur, but at least everything else is great besides the game engine and graphics settings.