French studio Sandfall Interactive turn-based RPG "Clair Obscur: Expedition 33" found itself at the center of a rare industry situation -- the same work won a record number of awards at The Game Awards while having its award canceled at The Indie Game Awards due to AI use controversy. The work was released April 2025 to critical acclaim, winning 8 awards at The Game Awards 2025 including Game of the Year. The industry-wide question: it is becoming difficult to find projects that do not use AI at all. Concept art drafts, prototyping, animation assistance, localization, QA automation -- AI has become an everyday tool throughout development pipelines. Games known to use AI on Steam accumulated $660M in revenue in 2025. The Larian Studios parallel: same period, Larian Studios faced similar controversy over AI use in new Divinity series development; CEO Swen Vincke clarified "AI is used only for initial ideation and internal reference; all final art, writing, and acting is human-created" -- but fans raised "where is the boundary between reference and final output?" The question the game industry must answer: should zero-tolerance AI policies assess whether AI-generated content appears in the final product rather than whether AI was used at any stage of development?