Clair Obscur” Expedition 33’s record breaking award month took a bit of a hit when The Indie Game Awards announced they were stripping Expedition 33 of their wins in the Game of the Year and Debut Game categories. The awards were instead awarded to second place in those categories, Blue Prince and Sorry We’re Closed respectively. 

AI Giveth and AI Taketh Away

The loss of the awards comes after Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive admitted to using generative AI in the game, and one of The Indie Game Awards organisers Six One Indie has a strict no-AI stance. The awards said on the decision 

“On the day of the premiere, Sandfall Interactive did in fact confirm that gen AI was used in the making of Expedition 33. Despite agreeing that no gen AI was used in the making of the game when it was submitted to us for consideration, unfortunately, that’s not the case.”

The use of generative AI in Expedition 33 appears to have been used to create newspaper textures in the game according to Reddit, with a few files sneaking through into launch as most had been removed prior to launch.

Still A Good Month for Expedition 33

Despite the loss of the two awards it was still a pretty good month for the team at Sandfall Interactive, as Expedition 33 picked up nine wins, including the top prize Game of the Year, along with Best Indie Game, Best Debut Indie Game, Best Art Direction, Best Score, Best RPG, Best Narrative, Best Game Direction, and Best Performance (for Jennifer English).


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