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Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

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Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#161

Post by theshrike79 »

krapp wrote: post #148
veidr wrote: post #127

LOL this is beyond idiotic. Banning AI-generated assets from being used in the game is a red line we could at least debate. But banning using AI at all while developing the game is... obviously insane on its face. It's literally equivalent to saying "you may not use Photoshop while developing your game" or "you may not use VS Code or Zed or Cursor or Windsurf or Jetbrains while developing your game" or "you may not h…

If LLMs were simply a niche but somewhat useful technology people could choose to use or avoid, then sure, such an absolutist stance seems excessive. But this technology is being aggressively pushed into every aspect of our lives and integrated into society so deeply that it can't be avoided, and companies are pushing AI-first and AI-only strategies with the express goal of undermining and replacing artists (and even…

It’s like banning any and all uses of chainsaws for any kind of work ever just because some bros juggle with them and have chainsaw juggling conventions.

It’s just a tool, but like any tool it can be used the right way or wrong way. We as a society are still learning which is which.

Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#162

Post by oliwarner »

thiht wrote: post #59
skibidithink wrote: post #21

The AI witch hunt claims its first victim, apparently over some placeholder textures. https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-c... > 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, insta…

That’s incredibly harsh. A blanket ban on AI generated assets is dumb as hell. Generating placeholder assets is completely acceptable.

But creating and picking those placeholders used to be somebody's job, maybe a junior artist. Now they're automated off the back of somebody else's work. And here we have an admission, but how many artists are being sidestepped in major games developers now? It won't be long before the EAs and Ubisofts of the world fire theirs. Then it'll be developers. Then it'll just be a committee of dolphins picking balls to feed into a black box that pumps out games.

It doesn't seem strange that an industry award protects the workers in the industry. I agree, it seems harsh, but remember this is just a shiny award. It's up to the Indie Game Awards to decide the criteria.

Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#163

Post by [deleted] »

conradfr wrote: post #29
hambes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but that is a different issue. The use of generative AI for art is being rightfully criticised because it steals from artists. Generative AI for source code learns from developers - who mostly publish their source with licenses that allow this. The quality suffers in both cases and I would personally criticise generative AI in source code as well, but the ethical argument is only against profiting from artists…

Is there a OSS licence that excludes LLM?

[deleted]

Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#165

Post by veidr »

krapp wrote: post #148
veidr wrote: post #127

LOL this is beyond idiotic. Banning AI-generated assets from being used in the game is a red line we could at least debate. But banning using AI at all while developing the game is... obviously insane on its face. It's literally equivalent to saying "you may not use Photoshop while developing your game" or "you may not use VS Code or Zed or Cursor or Windsurf or Jetbrains while developing your game" or "you may not h…

If LLMs were simply a niche but somewhat useful technology people could choose to use or avoid, then sure, such an absolutist stance seems excessive. But this technology is being aggressively pushed into every aspect of our lives and integrated into society so deeply that it can't be avoided, and companies are pushing AI-first and AI-only strategies with the express goal of undermining and replacing artists (and even…

I mean, I share some of the concerns you expressed, but at the same time there is no chance at all that working programmers and artists won't be using LLMs (and whatever "AI" comes next).

I'm a programmer, and I enjoyed the sort of "craftsman" aspect of writing code, from the 1990s until... maybe last year. But it's over. Writing code manually is already the exception, not the rule. I am not an artist, and I also really do understand that artists have a more legitimate grievance (about stealing prior art) than we programmers do.

As a practical matter, though, that's irrelevant. I suspect being an "artist" working in games, movies, ads, etc will become much like coding already is: you produce some great work manually, as an example, and then tell the bots "Now do it like this ... all 100 of you."

Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#167

Post by [deleted] »

latexr wrote: post #129
skibidithink wrote: post #21

The AI witch hunt claims its first victim, apparently over some placeholder textures. https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-c... > 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, insta…

From the submitted article: > "When it was submitted for consideration, representatives of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination." Whatever placeholder you…

[deleted]

Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#168

Post by latexr »

whatevaa wrote: post #141
latexr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes shit happens. But you’re also not supposed to drive as close to the speed limit as possible. That number is not a target to hit, it’s a wall you should stay within a good margin of. I understand analogies are seldom flawless, but the speed limit one in particular I feel does not apply because you can get a fine proportional to your infraction (go over the limit a little bit, small fine; go over it a lot,…

No, everybody treats speed limit as expected speed as long as conditions allows it.

Whether “everyone does it” has no bearing on it being what should be done. Most people also speed up on yellow lights, but you should be doing the exact opposite.

Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#169

Post by BoredPositron »

skibidithink wrote: post #21

The AI witch hunt claims its first victim, apparently over some placeholder textures. https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-07-19/the-low-cost-c... > 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, insta…

It's not about the asset it's about them first claiming that they did not use gen ai during production. One is an oopsie and the other a blatant lie. If the award requirements say you can't participate if you used generative AI and you lie about it it's a pretty clear cut case. Either be certain you don't ship AI placeholders or just don't lie. The outrage in this thread and hyper focusing on the asset instead of the lie is the problem.

Re: Clair Obscur having its Indie Game Game Of The Year award stripped due to AI use

#170

Post by torginus »

Rather than going into a huge rant about this, let me just give a quick anecdote.

It used to be there were tons of websites, like textures.com, which curated a huge database of textures, usable by art professionals and hobbyists alike. Some of it was free, others you had to pay for, both generally speaking, it wasn't too expensive, and if you picked up 3d modeling as a hobby, you could produce pretty decent results without spending a dime.

Then came the huge companies (you know which ones) which slurped up all these websites, and turned them into these SaaS monstrosities, with f2p mechanics. Textures were no longer free, but you had to pay in 'tokens' which you got from a subscription, which pushed you into opaque pricing models, bundling subscriptions, accidental yearly signups with cancellation fees, you know the drill.

Then came AI, which is somehow fair use, and instead of having to pay for that stuff, you could ask SD to generate a tiling rock texture for you.

Is this blatant copyrightwashing? I'd argue yes. But in this case, does copyright uphold any morally supportable princible, or does it help artists get paid?

F no.

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