The gaming world appeared ablaze after the Indie Game Awards announced that it was rescinding the top honors awarded to RPG darling Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 due to the use of generative AI during development. Sandfall Interactive recently sat down with a group of influencers for a private interview session, where the French studio was probed about recent AI controversies. Game director Guillaume Broche clarified some of the misinformation surrounding the studio and reiterated what other Sandfall developers have said about generative AI usage during interviews held earlier in the year.
Transcription of the Q&A comes courtesy of gaming content creator Sushi, who was one of the handful of influencers who were present at the session. Twitch streamer crizco prefaced his question by recounting the storm surrounding Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios’ admission about using generative AI during game development.
And they lied about it on the award application, but yes.
i can see how this would happen though: marketing team simplistically asks about AI assets, dev team says no because it’s not in the final product that they’re aware of, and that miscommunication is exactly that: neither team is trying to be dishonest, it’s just that some information got lost along the way
their award should have been rescinded for sure
but also that shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of the studio going forward as long as they apologise and it was legitimately internal miscommunication rather than an attempt to deceive