The Indie Game Awards has revoked Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 win at its 2025 show after developer Sandfall Interactive confirmed using generative AI during the game’s development.
The disqualification came down to a simple rule violation. When Sandfall submitted the game for consideration, representatives agreed that no generative AI was used in development. On the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, the studio confirmed gen AI had been used for certain textures. Under IGA policy, that contradiction automatically disqualifies the game.
The confirmation followed earlier evidence that AI-generated content had made it into the shipped game. Players and journalists identified a newspaper texture that showed clear signs of AI generation. Sandfall patched out the texture and replaced it with a non-AI version shortly after the discovery.
The texture incident raised questions about how AI tools were used during production. The most common explanation points to AI-generated placeholders that developers use during early stages of game creation. These temporary assets are meant to be replaced before launch. In this case, at least one placeholder slipped through into the final build.
Some reports suggest the AI content may have come from third-party asset packs available on the Unreal Engine marketplace rather than being created in-house by Sandfall. The Unreal marketplace includes various assets, some of which contain AI-generated elements that developers might not immediately recognize as such.
The placeholder problem
The newspaper texture incident exposes a risk in modern game development. Generative AI can produce placeholder assets that often do not look deliberately unfinished. They are usually devoid of any type of watermark or label that tells QA testers they are placeholders.
The use of gen AI has come under significant scrutiny following The Game Awards when Jason Schreier interviewed Swen Vincke about Larian’s upcoming game Divinity. There was huge backlash to the Larian boss’ comments, and Schreier had to issue further statements that added context to the situation.
