According to Kotaku, the Indie Game Awards 2025 has retracted three major awards following controversies over undisclosed AI use and a partnership with a contentious hardware maker. The top prize, Game of the Year, and the Best Debut Indie award, both originally given to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from developer Sandfall Interactive, were rescinded after the studio admitted on the day of the awards that it had used generative AI art in production, contradicting its earlier submission. A third award, an Indie Vanguard selection for the Game Boy-like game Chantey by Greek developer Gortyn Code, was also pulled because its physical cartridge is exclusively sold by ModRetro, a company owned by Palmer Luckey, the billionaire founder of military contractor Anduril Industries. As a result, the new Game of the Year winner is Blue Prince, while Best Debut now goes to Sorry We’re Closed from à la mode games. The awards organizer, Six One Indie, stated both decisions were due to violations of its strict rules against generative AI and its progressive values.
A values-based awards show hits turbulence
Here’s the thing about the Indie Game Awards: it’s built on a specific, progressive ethos. It’s not trying to be the Game Awards. Its whole point is to champion indie values, which it explicitly defines as excluding generative AI and avoiding partnerships with companies whose principles conflict with its own. So when a winner violates those core tenets, the organizers really have no choice but to act. But this situation is messy. Clair Obscur was already a controversial pick because Sandfall Interactive is backed by publisher Kepler Interactive—hardly a scrappy indie outfit. The AI revelation just gave the awards a clear, rules-based reason to walk it back. The ModRetro case is even more ideologically charged. It’s not about the game’s quality; the IGA FAQ still calls Chantey “a wonderful throwback.” It’s purely about not wanting to platform a company tied to Anduril’s military work. You can agree or disagree with that stance, but it’s consistent with the show’s identity.
Winners, losers, and the AI question
So who actually benefits from this mess? Well, Sorry We’re Closed and Blue Prince get a massive, unexpected spotlight. That’s huge for those teams. But the real loser might be trust. Sandfall’s alleged move—claiming no AI use until the literal day of the ceremony—feels incredibly short-sighted. Did they think no one would notice? In an industry where AI use is the third rail of ethical debate, being caught in a lie is far more damaging than being transparent from the start. It puts every other nominee and winner under a suspicious microscope. And for the IGA itself, this is a brutal test of its principles. Enforcing your rules is good, but having to retract your top two awards makes the entire selection process look flawed. It raises a tough question: if your vetting failed this badly, what else slipped through?
gaming”>The broader landscape of ethical gaming
Look, most big awards shows don’t operate like this. They’re not disqualifying games for using AI tools or for who manufactures their physical copies. The IGAs are carving out a specific, politicized niche. And that’s fine! The market has room for that. But this episode highlights the immense practical difficulty of being an “ethical” arbiter in a complex industry. It requires deep, investigative vetting that maybe a small team can’t always manage. It also shows how a game’s production and distribution chain—things most players never see—can suddenly become the whole story. For Gortyn Code, it’s a raw deal; their cool Game Boy project on Itch.io is now overshadowed by its association with ModRetro. The IGA is trying to separate the art from the business partner, but in today’s climate, that’s almost impossible. Once the connection is made, it sticks.
What this means moving forward
Basically, this is a wake-up call for everyone. For developers: read the submission rules carefully and be brutally honest, because getting caught lying is a career stain. For awards organizers: your vetting process needs to be ironclad if your rules are this strict. The IGA’s website and statements from Six One’s Mike Towndrow on Bluesky make their position clear, but enforcement is the hard part. And for the audience? It’s a reminder that “indie” isn’t just a budget size anymore. It’s an increasingly tangled web of ethics, tools, and affiliations. These awards tried to navigate that web with a clear moral compass, and they still got caught in it. The conversation about what “indie” means, and what values it should uphold, just got a lot louder.
