Blue Prince Reconfirms That It Didn t Use AI After Taking Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 s Indie GOTY Award
Vaspaan Dastoor is an Editor for TheGamer. Previously worked at IGN India and constantly tries to get people to make time for an LOTR marathon. He can be found giving hot takes for cold responses at @DastoorVaspaan
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been raking in all the awards this year, including the big one at the Indie Game Of The Year Awards. However, it was stripped of the award just hours after the ceremony due to the alleged use of AI in its development, and fans were expectedly disappointed. The GOTY title eventually went to Blue Prince.
The backlash was pretty strong, as you’d expect, but The Indie Game Awards said that it has a “hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself.” With all this going down last night, Blue Prince publisher Raw Fury has released a statement to clarify that no AI was used during the development of the game.
Blue Prince Reiterates That No AI Was Used During Development
“For people that need confirmation: There is no AI used in Blue Prince,” said Raw Fury’s. “The game was built and crafted with full human instinct by Tonda Ros [Dogubomb] his team. It is the result of eight years of development, fueled by imagination and creativity, and we are extremely proud of what Tonda has achieved.”
The Indie Game Awards explained in an FAQ how Clair Obscur got nominated in the first place and why the award was later rescinded. “When it was submitted for consideration, a representative 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. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards.”
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Who actually cares if GenAI was used in the development of a game? There’s a HUGE difference between AAA Slop CoD skins being AI-generated, versus a dedicated indie team using AI to assist with a few minor tasks or assets. If the game looks good, and plays well, and was designed by hand, I could care less what if any assets were AI-generated.
People need to get their heads out of their asses and realize, is that what AI has the potential to do, is let an indie team of 3-5 guys do the work of an indie team of 10+ guys in the same amount of time. Or letting a solo dev potentially work on a game that would normally need a small team of 3-5 people. The key here is, that it’s used responsibly. AI can potentially generate multiple assets based off a single source artist or style of content, and do an excellent job at it and save literally thousands of hours of work.
The whole anti-AI stance is just typical internet over reaction, and is just as stupid as the obsession with games that are ‘woke’ or ‘not woke’. It has nothing to do with the actual conversation of, “Is this actually a good game or not?”
2025-12-22 15:30:44
The fact of the matter is. It doesn’t matter how bad people think Blue Prince is. A rule was broken. It doesn’t matter if the rule was broken a little or broken a lot. The fact is that sandfall submitted this game for consideration knowing what the rules were. And then it was later discovered that they had used AI makes them not only rule breakers, but liars too. The whole thing could have been avoided if the powers that be had been honest and not submitted 33 in the first place. The fact that they lied about it and not so much did the thing is what the moral is here.
2025-12-22 14:54:07
They were literally fully open about the use of ai for placeholder textures back in July, so it’s hard to believe they were intentionally trying to deceive the indie game awards ppl since it was public information. Probably was more like a misunderstanding of the application of the rules (since the game didn’t really even break the rule) or they just lied abt e33 saying they didn’t use gen ai. Additionally, since the information was easily accessible public information, this either proves that the indie game awards thought e33 didn’t break the rule when it was nominated or just decided to not do any research at all.
2025-12-22 16:11:52
