Do Gamers Hate AI? Indie Game Awards Disqualifies 'Clair Obscur' Over GenAI Usage (insider-gaming.com)
- Reference: 0180434413
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/12/21/1945258/do-gamers-hate-ai-indie-game-awards-disqualifies-clair-obscur-over-genai-usage
- Source link: https://insider-gaming.com/indie-game-awards-disqualifies-clair-obscur-expedition-33-gen-ai/
> Just this month, the latest Postal game was [1]axed by its publisher, which was "overwhelmed with negative responses" from the "concerned Postal community" after fans spotted AI-generated material in the game's trailer. The developers of Arc Raiders were [2]accused of using AI instead of voice actors, leading to calls for boycotts, while the developers of the Call of Duty franchise were called out for AI-generated assets that players found strewn across Black Ops 7 .Games that weren't developed with generative AI are getting [3]caught up in accusations anyway, while workers at Electronic Arts are [4]going to the press to describe pressure from bosses to adopt AI tools. Nintendo has sworn off using generative AI, as has the company behind the Cyberpunk series. Valve, the company that operates Steam, now requires AI disclosures on listed games and [5]surveys all submitters . Perhaps sensing the emergence of a new constituency, California congressman Ro Khanna responded in November to the Call of Duty backlash:"We need regulations that prevent companies from using AI to eliminate jobs to extract greater profits," he [6]posted on X....
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> AI is often seen as a tool for managers to extract more productivity and [7]justify layoffs. Among players, it can foster a sense that gamers are being tricked or ripped off, while also dovetailing with more general objections to generative AI. It can sometimes be hard to tell whether gamer backlash is a [8]bellwether or an outlier, an early signal from our youngest major creative industry or a localized and unique fit of rage. The sheer number of incidents here suggests the former, which foretells bitter, messy, and confusing fights to come in entertainment beyond gaming — where, notably, technologies referred to as "AI" have previously been embraced with open arms.
And now "the price of the sort of memory PC gamers most want to buy has skyrocketed" ( [9]per Tom's Hardware ). "The rush to build data centers is making it much more expensive to game. [10]Nobody's going to be happy about that."
[11] Insider Gaming shares another example of anti-AI sentiment in the gaming industry :
> The Indie Game Awards took place on December 18, and, as many could assume, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 [12]took home the awards for Game of the Year and Debut Game. However, things have changed and The Indie Game Awards are making a big decision to strip the Clair Obscur and developer Sandfall Interactive of their awards over the use of gen AI in the game.
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> In an announcement made on Saturday afternoon, Six One Indie, the creators of the show, said that it's removal comes after the discovery after voting was done, and the show was recorded. "The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself," [13]the statement reads . "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.
Polygon notes the award-stripping is "due to inclusion of [14]generative AI assets at launch that were quickly patched out ."
> Quotes from earlier in the year from Sandfall Interactive's FranÃois Meurisse made the rounds on social media last week amid a news cycle caught up in the [15]use of generative AI in games ... In June, the Spanish outlet El País [16]published a story including an interview conducted around Clair Obscur 's launch, in which Meurisse admitted that Sandfall used a minimal amount generative AI in some form during the game's development... Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launched with what some suspected to be AI-generated textures that, as it clarified to El País, were then replaced with custom assets in a swift patch five days after release.
[1] https://www.pcgamesn.com/postal-bullet-paradise/canceled-ai-use
[2] https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/every-game-company-is-now-using-ai-nexons-ceo-defends-the-use-of-generative-ai-in-game-development-in-the-wake-of-arc-raiders-controversy/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/jun/26/video-game-developers-using-ai-even-when-they-arent-stamina-zero
[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-ai-divide-roiling-video-game-giant-electronic-arts-2025-10
[5] https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3862463747997849618
[6] https://www.ign.com/articles/us-congressman-blasts-call-of-duty-black-ops-7s-alleged-ai-images-we-need-regulations-that-prevent-companies-from-using-ai-to-eliminate-jobs
[7] https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-ai-divide-roiling-video-game-giant-electronic-arts-2025-10
[8] https://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844/
[9] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/the-ram-pricing-crisis-has-only-just-started-team-group-gm-warns-says-problem-will-get-worse-in-2026-as-dram-and-nand-prices-double-in-one-month
[10] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/109394/nvidia-to-cut-supply-of-best-value-geforce-rtx-50-series-gpus-in-half-over-memory-shortages/index.html
[11] https://insider-gaming.com/indie-game-awards-disqualifies-clair-obscur-expedition-33-gen-ai/
[12] https://insider-gaming.com/the-indie-game-awards-2025-all-award-winners/
[13] https://www.indiegameawards.gg/faq
[14] https://www.polygon.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-indie-game-awards-goty-rescinded/
[15] https://www.polygon.com/divinity-larian-studios-generative-ai-swen-vincke/
[16] https://elpais.com/cultura/2025-06-28/la-revolucion-creativa-low-cost-cuando-la-tecnologia-pone-el-arte-al-alcance-de-todos.html
Of course we do, the bubble is strangling consumer (Score:2)
[1]yes, GamersNexus shows you why [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@GamersNexus/videos
Re: (Score:3)
[1]Their secondary channel which shows the corporate greed and bubble [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@GNCAInvestigates
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
The above hatespeak must be downed.
Re: (Score:3)
So I must ask this. We're talking about video games and artificial intelligence and the first thing on your mind is "chicks with dicks"?
It's automated plagiarism (Score:5, Insightful)
But more importantly it makes everything into shit.
Specifically AI copies and regurgitates and when companies start using it what's going to happen is everything ends up turning into slop like all those shitty mobile games that all look the same.
Apart from AI devouring all the RAM and drives and electricity and jobs the reality is if you use it to make games your games are going to look like crap because the AI is going to spit out a rough approximation of everything that was used as an input resulting in the lowest common denominator.
It's like how you've got those modern military shooters and you can take five of them and take a screenshot and they're indistinguishable because they're all being made from the same crap template. YouTuber Yahtzee called it spunk gargle wee-wee.
The reason it's called AI slop is because it all blends together into a slop and becomes an indistinguishable and gross mess and there's no getting away from that just because of the nature of AI and the fundamental underpinnings of the technology.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean because it learns just like people do from our common cultural heritage?
Remember, the point of intellectual property is to incentivize creation not to allow authors to block the creation of new works. That's why it's only supposed to be a limited time and we have exceptions for sufficiently transformative uses.
Only bad one (Score:2)
One can clearly see the three phases in image and video generation.
First everyone finds its cute, because it makes funny mistakes and doesn't look like something serious. Then everyone gets upset if the machine that can literally produce and image from a text prompt doesn't get the number of fingers right and the hate ensues. And now we get into the phase that it is as good or better than human made content and people start saying things like "Who said there could be no good AI slop" when they laugh about a
Re: (Score:2)
What your missing is the fact that lots of people use it responsibly and no one notices. If you are using it right, e.g., to help you write a bunch of documents (it helped immeasurably with the right tone and suggesting phrases for all the paperwork for my wife's tenure application) no one notices because you use it responsibly and don't just copy paste whatever it does. Exactly *because* people are so hostile, everyone using it in a responsible way doesn't get noticed and all you hear about are the idiot
There are always plenty of loud morons (Score:3)
While I am no fan of attributing powers to generative AI that it really does not have. But it certainly has its uses in prototyping, generating mock-ups and experiments or adjusting parameters. Hence it is absolutely no problem using it there. Using it for final assets that then get carefully reviewed and adjusted by real, competent artists (that also did the prompting) is also absolutely no problem.
Of course, any king of "slop" is not acceptable, whether AI generated or generated by incompetent humans. But what matters is the result quality, and GenAI CANNOT replace creativity or insight and will never be able to.
It is how AI is used... (Score:3)
AI has been in games, since games have been around. Find the path algorithms, procedural generation, tuning encounter difficulty.
The problem is how AI's use has changed. Instead of helping with the mechanics, it is used to replace the art and storytelling of a game. We all know the plot of Wizardry 1-3, and the Ultima series. Having subsequent games just be randomly written cheapens the experience.
The big thing is that AI is used to get rid of all the game designers, artists, and other people who breathe soul into a game. The music for example, or how some boss makes a speech with an inside joke, referencing something before battle starts.
Couple this with games being more and more expensive, and filled with crap like gachas, loot packs, worthless DLC, and players are realizing that they are not getting much for their money spent. Especially with the fact that newer games are rented and eventually will disappear.
Re: (Score:2)
Gen AI in games is just at the beginning. Expect worlds to become a lot more realistic. NPCs with own will, unique dialogues with them, side quests that are not programmed but arise from interactions with NPC (and between NPCs) and more. The problem is that it is highly non-trivial to balance such things and building them will be all but Slop, because you need to tune a lot how they should and should not act to create a plausible world instead of a caricature or comic. But I am sure the big studios will cre
Re:Welcome home (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate AI bot speak.
No... no one uses it, except those that dont know what they are doing. And instead of using it to LEARN, they use it as a replacement, making what they do worth less to consumers, causing more power draw to process bad and inefficient code, and chunking on other peoples work to produce the artists work without contributing anything to the artist.
"AI" use doesnt discount a game, or reduce prices. That is a false statement.
The bubble is coming soon, your stock is at risk.
Re: (Score:1)
The best part about this denialist screeeching is that it doesn't matter even if you manage to claw back some of the progress and temporarily stall it.
Chinese are coming. They already showed how good they are. And they're all in on AI, just like all of the good studios are. And as we've seen with your ilk publishing the "very optimized, very efficient decolonization simulators" like the latest installment in Assassin's Creed that killed not just the studio that made it, not just the franchise, but got the e
Nope (Score:3)
It's popular for some of the cool kids to posture and kvetch about it right now, but no, normal people really don't care - as long as it's a good game.
Stop companies using AI to replace jobs (Score:2)
So... we're now crossing over between denial and anger?
I am sad for the artists who are now rapidly losing their jobs to AI. I'm sorry for the code monkeys. I expect to lose my job (systems engineer) in the next 2-5 years.
This is a freight train that no one is going to stop. If you regulate it in the US, they'll just lose more ground to China.
The real question is how you're going to change the world's economic model so that the benefits from AI are not being distilled into the hands of the top 1%.
Re: (Score:2)
And it would be pretty hypocritical to try and stop it now after we've been insisting that people who work with their hands accept the fact that technology might cost them their jobs for hundreds of years. But yes, the question of whether we are going to use the resulting productivity gains to improve the general welfare or to further empower the wealthy is a big one. I'm hoping this time we can get it right.
Ridiculous Politics (Score:2)
Why not strip an award because the creator has the wrong political affiliation or anything else you don't like. Game awards should just evaluate the quality of the game not make political statements.
If you are really convinced generative AI makes games shitty then what's the problem? Presumably those games won't get the awards because they suck. The only reason for this policy is because you think it *will* make for good games but you want to stop its use anyway.
Ohh Now It's Your Job It's Different? (Score:2)
Lots of this anger seems to stem from the fear that AI will take the jobs of programmers and artists. And while I sympathize (it might destroy my vocation as well) for centuries we've been asking craftspeople and those who do manual labor to accept the fact that their careers can be upended in the name of economic progress. The original sabotage is (supposedly) a term that arose out of the anger about automatic looms hundreds of years ago. Now the same kind of automation that took jobs from people who wo
We Hate You Because GPUs and RAM (Score:3)
Aside from that AI makes slop, and is owned by scum.
Re: (Score:1)
> rsilvergun says he's a gamer too and he sure seems to hate AI.
He obviously is an AI. Not actual person could be that full of shit, so he must be. The self hatred means he's a bit more advanced than most, sure, but everything that comes from his is still slop.