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.
The rules being “idiotic” is a different issue from whether using pre-existing assets as placeholders is okay. For instance, one could argue that genAI, even during the concept phase, is an unfair advantage like taking steroids for a sports competition. For the purpose of fairness they have a blanket ban on genAI, not simply because “AI bad”.