Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and AI: what really happened

There is a beautiful game, a French studio that made it, a competition rule, two trophies, an admission and a storm. Here is everything you need to understand about the artificial intelligence controversy around Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the RPG by Sandfall Interactive crowned Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2025 and then stripped of two awards at the Indie Game Awards for its use of generative AI.

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A French RPG that became a phenomenon

Developed by Sandfall Interactive, an independent studio founded in Montpellier by former Ubisoft staff, and published by Kepler Interactive, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched on April 24, 2025 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series and even Game Pass on day one. This turn-based RPG, whose world blends an imagined Belle Époque, a painting in motion and an almost unreal light, was praised by millions of players and by critics. All of France, then the whole world, came to know the Montpellier team’s game.

The 2025 awards season was unprecedented for a French indie game : seven awards at the Golden Joystick Awards on November 20, 2025, including Game of the Year (source : Forbes), then a triumph at The Game Awards 2025 on December 11 in Los Angeles, with nine trophies, including the coveted Game of the Year, plus Best Art Direction, Best Music and Best Performance (voice acting). One week later, on December 18, the Indie Game Awards gave it two more awards : Game of the Year and Best Debut Game.

And then, very quickly, the backlash. On December 20, the organization announced that everything was being taken back. The reason : the use of generative AI during development. Which is exactly what the studio had just acknowledged, itself, two days earlier.

The complete timeline of the affair

At the Indie Game Awards : a strict rule and a late admission

The Indie Game Awards, run by Six One Indie, arbitrate a historical contradiction : an occasion to celebrate indie games, and a very clear rulebook. The event’s official FAQ states it without ambiguity : The Indie Game Awards hold a firm stance on the use of generative AI throughout the nomination process and at the ceremony itself. In practice, a game involved with generative AI cannot even be submitted.

That is precisely the document Sandfall Interactive signed. When submitting the game, the studio certified that no generative AI had been used during development. Two versions of the truth now collide : the one in the dossier, in black and white, and the one the studio is about to reveal, on its own, on the very night of the ceremony.

The jury ruled, and it stayed nuanced : Although the visual elements concerned have since been removed and it is an excellent game, this use goes against the rules in force. Two awards withdrawn, then : the Game of the Year, now given to Blue Prince, and the Best Debut Game, handed to Sorry We’re Closed. The studio, for its part, did not contest : it accepted the decision, full stop.

The “placeholder textures” : what players actually saw

When people talk about AI and Clair Obscur, the question that keeps coming back is : “where exactly is the AI in the game?” The answer fits into a story of small details, and that is the whole lesson of the affair.

In the days after launch, attentive players shared screenshots of an unexpected element : a few posters in the starting area, where shapes blur, lines blend together and details oddly “evolve.” Also textures whose patterns repeat identically : walls, rocks, settings that lack the handcrafted personality of the rest of the game.

In other words, flaws very typical of AI generation : melted shapes, repetitions, subtle inconsistencies, far from the artists’ work.

The studio reacted quickly : the flagged elements were replaced by original creations in the very first patches deployed after release, barely a week after the game launched. The studio would later explain that they were replacement textures and illustrations, placeholders meant to be redone, and that the mistake came from the quality-control process : the placeholder textures were patched out after slipping through the QA process, as IGN put it about the studio’s answer.

The detail matters : it is not the finished game that AI produced. It is a handful of drafts that escaped the reviewers. But for the Indie Game Awards it was final : the rule applies to the process of creation, not to the screen. A single generated image is enough, even for half-finished background, even for the time of one patch. The studio paid for it, and that is what gave the story its reach.

The studio’s answer : “everything in the game is human made”

Once the storm had settled, Sandfall Interactive spoke up. Guillaume Broche, co-founder and creative director, spoke in a question-and-answer session broadcast on YouTube, organized with publisher Kepler Interactive. His answers made the rounds of the gaming press.

And about the future, the promise is firm : It is pretty hard to predict what the future will look like, but everything will be made by humans from us.

To be fair, the release of this Q&A session was not innocent : in the meantime, another major indie studio, Larian (Baldur’s Gate 3), had itself been flagged for generative AI uses, sparking waves of debate about double standards in praise and accusations. The pressure was strong, and this answer, in the form of a public commitment, closed the subject.

Still, attentive readers noticed a nuance : on June 28, 2025, a few months before the admission, production director François Meurisse explained to the Spanish newspaper El País that AI was used selectively : We use some AI, but not much. The key is that we were very clear about what we wanted to do and where to invest. A “limited” use, then : present in the production toolbox, but far from the final result. The studio never published a precise catalogue of those uses, even though, as the press reported, players spotted some suspicious elements before they were removed, namely those now-replaced textures.

Does the game still contain AI in 2026?

The honest answer is a dated finding, not a guarantee : according to Les Numériques (December 26, 2025), the studio said the version then available no longer contained any AI-generated element. Three facts support it :

• The flagged elements were removed with a patch after release, in the very first days, and replaced by original creations from the team.
• The studio said so on December 26, 2025 : according to Les Numériques, Sandfall Interactive said the current version of the RPG no longer contained any AI-generated element.
• The team has committed for the future : no more generative AI in the studio’s next games. A commitment, not a guarantee : the next releases will tell.

Three different realities must be separated. Assistive AI (tools that help organize, test, process) is not at stake. Generative AI for images and textures is the one from the controversy. And AI inside the game (enemy intelligence, movement programming, combat algorithms) has nothing to do with it : it is programming, not generation. When someone says “the game uses AI,” you have to ask which one. In the case of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 : enemies are animated by systems written by programmers, the art direction and the voices are human, and the only generated images have been removed (as of December 2025).

Why an issue of a few textures became global news

Because no other case summed up the state of the industry in 2025 so well : a brand-new discipline, ever stricter rules, and studios that do not always know where they stand.

Similar cases were not rare. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 had to acknowledge AI use after a six-fingered zombie appeared on a promotional image. Arc Raiders, Embark’s new game, was accused of using generated voice acting ; its rival Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Battlefield 6 were both criticized for turning to generative tools, as the gaming press recalled. Generative AI is not limited to games : the Tilly Norwood case, the virtual actress who does not exist, showed that the same debate stirs film and streaming. The CEO of Nexon made the rounds of the press : every company in the industry now uses AI. The takeaway is as educational as it is unsettling : if everyone does it, then we need rules, labels and transparency.

The rules followed, at least their first bricks :

The common thread : everything rests on trust. The “No Gen AI” label is verified by nobody ; the Steam disclosure is a simple form ; the Indie Game Awards rule only has teeth because a jury chose to enforce it. Hence the real lesson of the Clair Obscur case : trust has become the currency of this industry, and a single generated image, even hidden, is enough to break it.

The 6-clue test : spotting AI in a game’s visuals

Wondering whether a game you play contains AI-generated visuals? Nobody can answer for you, not even software. But clues exist, and they are exactly the ones used by the players who blew the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 case wide open. The test below gathers them : tick what you observe, then evaluate.

The test above summarizes the clues used by players and journalists. It does not replace a check : studios have no obligation to reveal their tools, and a perfectly honest game can still use reused textures.

What this changes for studios, awards and players

Beyond the fate of one game, this affair raises three structural questions. On rules : the awards ceremonies had to arbitrate, and their case law is already clear : the rule applies to the process, not the result. A studio using generative AI, even for a placeholder, even while removing it, is out of the running. That is a serious constraint for teams that, like Sandfall on a small scale, try to keep tight budgets.

On transparency : the warning is clear. Whoever does not disclose their use risks being found out by the community, and players have become careful inspectors : it all started with zooming into images of Clair Obscur’s starting area. The same reflex exists for text : Nation AI’s free AI detector tells you whether a passage sounds robotic. Proactive disclosure, as Steam requires, is easier to own than a forced confession.

On players : the affair mostly showed that excellent art direction cannot be repaired with a press release. The public loved the game and agreed on one point : the fact that Sandfall used a generated placeholder makes the game neither less beautiful nor less human. The nuance moved from the global judgment to the process of creation, and that might be the real novelty of this awards season : anyone can now ask “how were you made?” without being a party pooper.

FAQ : your questions about Clair Obscur and AI

In short : an exceptional game, one rule and one promise

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 remains an RPG freely inspired by the Belle Époque, made by a French team that spent years shaping it, and whose art direction was praised on every major stage. The AI affair takes nothing away from the nine Game Awards trophies, nor from the quality of the game : it only adds a line to the industry’s rulebook, the one that forbids automatic generation even behind the scenes, and a commitment from the studio for what comes next.

If what intrigues you in this story is the very possibility of generating visuals, the good news is that the tool is in your hands. Producing an image with a precise prompt, inspecting it under a magnifier, understanding what makes it credible or not : that is exactly what the players did, and it is the best way to never be caught off guard by a detail that does not add up. And to explore AI uses in English, the Nation AI free AI tools portal gathers the assistants that work without sign-up.