Clair Obscur won multiple awards but used generative AI art as placeholders during production.
The Indie Game Awards revoked Clair Obscur’s Debut and Game of the Year after the AI disclosure.
IGAs reassigned the awards (Blue Prince, Sorry We’re Closed) and reignited debate on gen-AI use.
For an even more funny example, Devolver digital (who published Enter the Gungeon, Cult of the Lamb, and I think Ball X Pit to name a few) market themselves as “an indie game publisher”. An oxymoron by previous definition, yet most would agree it’s true.
I thought of “not publicly traded” since shareholders usually are the ones to kill creativity, but it turns out DD IS public. And Valve isn’t, so that’d be a bit silly. (Even if I think the game dev part of Valve had/has the indie spirit of “fuck it, we do whatever”)