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...
It was released with the original placeholder AI assets, but patched out within 5 days. It’s pretty clear that they just missed replacing those assets prior to release.
I don’t know exactly which assets, or exactly how many… but from several article it seems one of them was a newspaper only used in the prologue, that no one would notice without directly looking at it up close, which 99.9% of people would never do, and could easily be overlooked doing final testing for game breaking issues prior to release.
And the failure to properly disclose could easily be explained by them messing around. Early in development, deciding not to use AI, and then forgetting about it. Which also explains it being left in for release accidentally. Updated assets were clearly made, just never replaced.
The disqualification had nothing to do with the assets being there for the release, it was solely about development as mentioned in every statement from the awards. Meaning even if it hadn’t been there at release, they still would have been disqualified. Hard criteria like that which disqualifies any sort of context or consideration is not fair. Especially when we’re talking about cutting edge technologies that teams will obviously be experimenting with before making decisions.
We’re not talking about a development team of 100+ artists here and a company forcing them to work 80 hour crunch weeks leading up to launch like much of the industry.
I don’t know exactly how their 30 or so team members break down for specialties, but I’m willing to bet we’re talking maybe 5 asset artists. Making the tens or hundreds of thousands of concept art pieces, and in game assets. Their time is finite and much better spent working on final assets than making placeholders that will just be replaced later. Experimenting with AI and dripping a placeholder in during month 6 that never gets touched again, and the final asset is made but missed when swapping them in at the end of development isn’t exactly damning
Literally removing work from a human(concept artist)
It’s not really “removing” work from a human, it’s utilizing the time of a very small and limited team more wisely. The AI didn’t replace a human, there was never going to be an additional person hired just to make that placeholder, at worst it just let the existing artists spend more time making final assets.
We’re also dealing with language differences. English is not the developer’s first language. What may seem a clear sentence to a native speaker, could be easily misinterpreted/mistranslated to something similar, but different enough that the answer changes.
It seems that the AI use was early in development, and limited to temporary placeholders that were going to be replaced. Since they were patched out within days of release, that seems to imply they already had replacement assets on hand, they were just missed during final checks before release.
The answer from the devs also changed prior to the awards show that implies that they may have had an updated interpretation of the qualification question or answer. If they thought the question was about AI use in the final product, then accidentally missing a placeholder swap shouldn’t be disqualifying. Likewise, early experimentation with the tech and then deciding not to use it probably should not disqualify either. But if the qualification is a hard yes/no with absolutely no context or consideration whatsoever, then that’s a different outcome, and hence them clarifying for the awards team.
Personally I think the hard limit without any room for consideration or interpretation is a shit qualification. Especially considering that isn’t really the case for most awards. Look at the definition of “indie” for example. There’s a half dozen different interpretations people have ranging from having to be self published, avoiding just large publishers, or just the publisher not having creative influence. That’s a lot of interpretation comparatively.
That’s exactly the takeaway I got from it as well.
It seems most likely that those were placeholders that were supposed to be replaced before release but were missed. Once they realized that some were missing, they got them replaced and pushed the update.
GenAI being used for placeholder stuff is arguably the perfect use case, especially for small studios without massive art teams.
They didn’t just replace the art later. It was intended to be placeholder art from the beginning. And was replaced 5 days after release. That tells me that they just missed replacing those temporary assets among tens of thousands of assets before release.
Using GenAI for something temporary that’s not intended to be final seems like the perfect use case for it. Especially on a small team where artist time is much better spent working on the final assets.
Cool… Generative AI used for placeholders during development that are replaced by actual artist work for the release is the definition of responsibly.
Given these assets were replaced within days of release here… Definitely seems like placeholders that were just missed during the final checks before release.
NASA’s next big eye on the cosmos is now fully assembled. On Nov. 25, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland....
Do you just ignore words when reading? Is everyone on the Internet illiterate? Because comment sections everywhere seem to indicate it’s a very high percentage.
While the main cooling system is important, the thermal interface material they pick is also a big deal with systems intended to not be user serviced and with long lasting lifetimes like consoles… It honestly depends a lot on what TIM they decided to go with. Traditional thermal pastes are cheap but almost always dry out after just a few years causing much higher temps. Liquid metal is great, but more expensive and you must design it right, vertical orientation can cause leakage if not properly designed (some laptops end up having issues because of this). Phase change material is probably the optimal middle ground for ease of installation, and simplified design.
Nearly everything is a derivative of something from before. Occasionally something new comes up though. I don’t remember anything like Getting Over It seems to have created the Foddian game genre for example. And while Balatro uses relatively normal cards for its base, the gameplay itself is unique.
This is one of the weird aspects of games that seems to make no sense because of archaic laws that never entered the 20th century, nevermind the 21st. It seems to be about manufacturing new copies of the already made game, not selling them. So it only affects digital sales, I would assume because of their “creation” on a new sale, every physical game copy was already manufactured and out there, nothing changes there.
I assume it did well if they’re looking to make more in the line, but I LOVED this game for chill podcast and audiobook listening. Pretty curious to see where they’re going with it.
This is one of the few games I keep installed and jump back to just as a chill game that requires no intense planning or strategy. The mechanics are simple, well executed, and easy to pick back up after not playing for a while. So many games have tons of complex mechanics that are fine when you’re playing it, but hard to remember if you haven’t touched it in a while.
Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam,...
What I see is Mastercard hiding behind their generic rules for processors and being fine with the processors taking unilateral action that could damage their brand.
Mastercard should demand they rescind the decision based on a flawed interpretation of their rules since the content IS NOT ILLEGAL where Steam provides it, or drop those processors entirely due to the brand damage their unilateral decision has caused. If Mastercard lets this sit, that signals that they agree with this decision, regardless of what they say, and they should be treated as such.
It is intentionally vague, because companies want to be able to weasel out of any and all accountability whenever possible.
But Mastercard isn’t off the hook either way even if we accept the rules as they are currently. Before this incident, Mastercard has been starting to censor adult content in general with rules changes. To the point where there was already a petition on the ACLU site about this exact type of censorship.
Mastercard is trying to weasel their way out of this particular instance because they didn’t directly have a hand in this video game situation, even though they clearly would agree with it based on other recent changes. They’re trying to play both sides by assuming that people didn’t know they were already doing these things.
Steam can 100% enter any market they want, especially something entirely digital like online payment processing. That’s pretty closely related to what they do already. They just have to have a reason to want to do so.
Steam makes a reported $3.5 million per employee from commissions alone. Possibly as much at $19 million per head across the board. To put that into perspective, Facebook, one of the most profitable companies on the planet, averages a net income of $780,000 per employee, and Apple at $476,000 per employee.
Steam may not be as large as those companies, but they’re so effectively streamlined. So much of their profits come from existing systems that only need minimal maintenance as opposed to needing to constantly develop new products. It is a well-oiled money printing machine at this point. And nothing they do is based on any sort of speculation bubble threatening to burst at any point.
That’s almost surely a result of how Valve works internally for approving projects. They operate with a flat management structure. With no bosses or managers, the employees themselves choose which projects to work on. The philosophy is that Valve only hires the best, and they should operate at their best doing what they enjoy instead of simply being told what to do.
Every employee at Valve is given the freedom to join whatever project they choose, or to create a new one. They are encouraged to work on what they feel if the most important project to the company and what will have the highest direct impact on their customers.
If the Valve employees wanted to make Half Life 3, they would. At this point the joke is that Valve simply can’t count to three. It feels like they want to keep that joke going more than make another Half Life game. Half Life 1 and 2, them Episode 1 and Episode 2, Portal 1 and Portal 2, Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike 2. Several of these have had other interim releases, especially Counter-Strike, but those were always based on the previous game and not a totally new game from scratch, much like the Half Life Episodes.
I don’t even understand how they give a shit. Seems like the perfect place for shareholders to want them to make as much money as possible, it’s a limited market.
I mean that would save millions and millions of dollars right off the top. Between salary, bonuses and stock were talking hundreds of millions in some cases. Maximum shareholder value increase.
It improved a bit, and then the studio began working on an overhaul internally to provide what the game should have been, sort of No Man’s Sky style… but they were shutdown by Bioware.
There’s a lot of reasons it ended up the way it did, development hell and poor management mostly. Hell, the flight mechanic, which had been added and removed several times in development, was core to the released game, and easily the best part, apparently wasn’t even decided to be a necessary feature until Patrick Soderlund, former head of EA studios, was very disappointed in a demo BioWare had shown in early 2017 that the team decided to add flying back in.
One of the core pillars of the game was essentially added just to impress an executive and keep the development going versus being canceled. Flight like in the game requires the entire map and structure of the game world to be different. If you can fly,. you now need to take advantage of the vertical space, something that simply doesn’t even get considered in most games. A mountain you can climb is not the same as needing to fill in an entire mountain range and canyon region with content.
Played for about 2 hours yesterday and that’s exactly what is happening. The game prevents you from plopping your space right on top of another base but the blocked region around it isn’t very large.
It’s been clear for over a decade that the Creation Engine (let’s be honest it’s still Gamebryo) has run its course. It is not a viable option for a modern game anymore. It has architectural limitations that simply prevent a modern gaming experience.
There have been so many Creation Engine apologists since Oblivion trying to justify its continued existence through multiple new Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, always trying to say that it’s fine. Starfield was the chance to prove that the limitations aren’t actually architectural and that it could be used for a modern game. Clearly that’s not the case. Taking just about any other modern open world RPG to directly compare, Starfield feels like crap in comparison. Hell, even the launch version of Cyberpunk felt better than Starfield.
The graphics aren’t the problem. The Creation Engine is not just graphics, it handles everything about how the game works. How the AI works and responds to events, how NPCs handle tasks even when not actively interacting with the player, etc. Graphics is only one part of a game, and that’s not the source of the issues.
Oblivion Remastered still uses the Gamebryo engine from Oblivion for everything with one exception, Unreal now handles the graphics. That’s why the game is nearly identical to the original in every way except graphics, it is.
No it’s exactly the same, you just notice it more because of the different context of a limited fantasy realm versus open stellar exploration.
Oblivion and Skyrim also have a bunch of procedurally generated content. But it is more easily ignored, because these are dungeons and caves and not numerous planets where you are walking for upwards of 15 minutes or more across open terrain to visit the same dozen locations. And having dozens of loading screens to stitch each small segment together.
Starfield as a concept doesn’t work with the engine, because the engine is incapable of adequately creating an open environment at that level. If it could, they would have given it to us instead of Skyrim in space. We got Skyrim in space because that’s the limit of the engine. Bethesda’s insistence of continuing to use it, and claiming that it’s not an issue, despite the clear deficiencies in the released product, is a slap in the face to every player. It’s the definition of “You’ll take what we give you, and like it”.
My strongest memory of Medal Of Honor is the undercover missions. Flipping the ID badge out over and over again like an idiot because the animation was funny.
I know there’s great love for Oblivion (I never played it when it was new), and of course Skyrim is the gold standard for new fans (I played the shit out of that and it was my first entry into the elder scrolls back when it came out 14 years ago…) but I really feel like this shadow drop of a half assed remake is just priming...
It’s not even much of a remaster. They just slapped a coat of paint on it.
The Gamebryo/Creation Engine is still there running the game, it just uses Unreal 5 for the graphical elements. And they updated some of the levelling to work more like Skyrim, because the Oblivion system sucked in comparison.
It’s still the same 20 year old Oblivion under the hood.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but calling it a remaster is a bit disingenuous.
More than a coat of paint. They didn’t actually port the game to Unreal 5, they just used it to make the graphics look better. The modding community could have done this years ago if that’s all they wanted to do. Skyblivion is more of a remaster than this official one.
With all of the resources of the original development and sources, I expect more than the modding community is capable of.
If you’re fine paying $50-60 for what amounts to a community graphical overhaul mod that’s fine. I expect more from an actual developer with access to the source code.
A remaster should be releasing Oblivion with an updated engine and graphics, and bringing in some gameplay enhancements from newer games. Technically this meets those requirements, but only by the bare minimum and all of those can be achieved with community mods for free.
A remake would be completely abandoning the decrepit Gamebryo/Creation Engine that’s clearly dragging all of their games down now, and has been for over a decade, and actually giving us something that doesn’t feel like it came out 20+ years ago.
I love the Elder Scrolls, Oblivion is one of my favorite games of all time, and the only one I ever bothered to get every achievement for back on the 360. But I won’t accept a half assed remaster for nearly full price just because it’s what Bethesda wants to distract everyone from the fact that Elder Scrolls 6 isn’t coming out anytime soon and they couldn’t just release Skyrim for the 12th time.
Don’t accept paying for mediocre products just because you’re desperate for content.
Up front cost cannot cover the ongoing API costs they must be paying for Google Maps. So either this has to be free and just a front end for the same shit, or they’ll still end up net negative.
Mumblings originally in 2017, job openings at the studio in 2018, officially announced in 2020. October 2022 Andrew Walsh, a senior writer from the Horizon Forbidden West team joined the Fable team. June of 2023 had an in-game trailer.
To be honest, that seems to be a reasonable timeframe, especially given the pandemic in the middle, if you aren’t following the “rush it out the door ASAP, fix it after release, if you ever do” approach.
Probably, but the internet is forever. Definitely for stuff like this. There will be tens of thousands of copies of this in a few hours and it will not disappear anytime soon.
Not really here, this would have been a dummy weight either way since it was the test payload for Falcon Heavy. So *something *was going to be sent up. The Tesla specifically was a publicity stunt, but a similar weight was going into a similar orbit.
The bigger question is why they lost tracking on it in the first place to where they weren’t sure what it was. This wasn’t from any sort of failure, this was a planned and fully successful launch payload into a planned orbit.
SpaceX rockets don’t add Methane to the atmosphere. When you burn something, you’re not adding that thing to the atmosphere, you’re adding byproducts from the combustion, and Methane isn’t one of the byproducts of any rocket fuel.
Starship uses methane as a fuel, but that’s not at all the same thing. Methalox engines are one of the cleanest burning rocket fuels after Hydrolox. When burnt, methane just becomes CO2 and water vapor along with a bit of NOx (Nitrous Oxide, aka laughing gas, aka that boost you see in Fast and the Furious) as well.
Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are Kerolox (Kerosene, RP-1) engines. RP-1 is basically just a highly refined kerosene. When burnt, it will produce CO2, water vapor, NOx, carbon soot, carbon monoxide (which again mostly becomes CO2) and a little bit of sulfur compounds. The exhaust is nasty but it is not that different from what a normal internal combustion car produces. And even with the large amounts, it is still lower than what cars/trucks/SUVs output to get everyone in your city back and forth to work, the grocery store, and home on a daily basis.
Better fine the US government or NASA for all the Saturn V upper stages that are floating around up there as well. Nearly every Saturn V third stage was sent into an orbit around the sun after the Lunar injection maneuver, they’re all still up there. In fact, they lose track of those and “rediscover” them all the time because. The three-body problem is not fully solvable with our current technology, and the further out you get from initial conditions the less accurate calculations become.
This entire thread is filled with people that know absolutely nothing about Space but the basics modern “media” poorly conveys, but feel the need to comment and display their ignorance proudly just because they hate Musk. It’s quite sad actually for an actual Astronomy community, there’s worse discussion in here than reddit.
After GOTY pull, Clair Obscur devs draw line in sand: 'Everything will be made by humans by us' (www.polygon.com) angielski
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...
Indie Game Awards Disqualifies Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Due To Gen AI Usage (insider-gaming.com) angielski
NASA completes Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope construction (phys.org) angielski
NASA’s next big eye on the cosmos is now fully assembled. On Nov. 25, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the largest clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland....
Games that I finished this year so far. Probably the best year of gaming for me since 2007 angielski
I had a PS4 until I sold it in June if you’re wondering how I played all of the uncharted games. Rest were on PC
Our first look at the Steam Machine, Valve’s ambitious new game console (www.theverge.com) angielski
Assassin's Creed is a "forever brand" because Ubisoft supported huge risks with it, ex director says: "Whereas, say, EA, you get these awful execs and they never made games and they came from toothpaste companies" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
We could have lived in a world where Hideo Kojima made a Matrix game, if only someone had told him he was offered to make one (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Ex-PlayStation boss says the games industry is "littered" with Fortnite clones and "people trying to do Overwatch with different skins," but keep dreaming if you're just trying to get "big sacks of money" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Rock Band 4 to be delisted on tenth anniversary following the expiration of its licenses (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
[Any Austin] Do Red Dead Redemption 2's Power Lines Connect to Anything? (youtu.be) angielski
Blackbird Interactive acquires full ownership of Hardspace: Shipbreaker IP (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
I assume it did well if they’re looking to make more in the line, but I LOVED this game for chill podcast and audiobook listening. Pretty curious to see where they’re going with it.
[Update: Valve Responds] Mastercard Denies Pressuring Steam To Censor 'NSFW' Games (kotaku.com) angielski
Updated: 8/1/2025 4:18 p.m. ET: In a statement to Kotaku, a spokesperson for Valve said that while Mastercard did not communicate with it directly, concerns did come through payment processor and banking intermediaries. They said payment processors rejected Valve’s current guidelines for moderating illegal content on Steam,...
Payment Processors Are Pressuring Major Gaming Vendors to Pull LGBTQ+ and NSFW Titles (www.them.us) angielski
Itch.io is delisting NSFW games due to pressure from payment processors (itch.io) angielski
The group responsible is “Collective Shout”, the same org has targeted Steam before....
Xbox Producer Recommends Laid Off Workers Should Use AI To 'Help Reduce The Emotional And Cognitive Load That Comes With Job Loss' (aftermath.site) angielski
Anthem is shutting down January 12th (www.gamespot.com)
Dune: Awakening Draws Nearly 100,000 Players On Steam Before Full Release (techcrawlr.com) angielski
Even Starfield's community patch modders are growing 'disenchanted' with the sci-fi RPG, as volunteers depart in droves: 'If nobody comes forward, we may have to retire the project' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Medal of honor on the PS1 angielski
What are some of your favorite memories playing this game?
Oblivion remake is... really making it apparent how outdated Bethesda is in its approach to making games angielski
I know there’s great love for Oblivion (I never played it when it was new), and of course Skyrim is the gold standard for new fans (I played the shit out of that and it was my first entry into the elder scrolls back when it came out 14 years ago…) but I really feel like this shadow drop of a half assed remake is just priming...
GeoGuessr is making its way to Steam next month after almost 12 years of sticking it out as a browser game (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Fable delayed to 2026 (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
Very likely will be a launch game for MS’s new handheld console....
NASA Ordered to Remove Anything About 'Women in Leadership' From Its Websites: Report (gizmodo.com) angielski
Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny Remastered - Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
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Friendship is survival in Citizen Sleeper 2 (www.polygon.com) angielski
Astronomers just deleted an asteroid because it turned out to be Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster (www.astronomy.com)