The gaming community is not impressed with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 winning the title of Best Debut Indie Game at the 2025 Game Awards. Gamers and netizens have expressed their thoughts and opinions online. However, before diving into their reactions and comments, here is a little more information on the award-winning game.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a role-playing video game that was developed by a French studio called Sandfall Interactive and was published by Kepler Interactive. The project began after Guillaume Broche, who worked with Ubisoft, left his job during the pandemic, to form Sandfall Interactive with his friends and contacts. The 30-person team took inspiration from games such as Final Fantasy, Persona, and other Japanese RPG games to create Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. They wanted to build something that was missing when it comes to games created by AAA studios.Here is a brief synopsis of the game:"Once a year, the Paintress wakes and paints upon her monolith. Paints her cursed number and everyone past that age turns to smoke and fades away. Year by year, that number ticks down and more of us are erased. Tomorrow she'll wake and paint '33.' Tomorrow we depart on our final mission - Destroy the Paintress, so she can never paint death again... We are Expedition 33."Keep reading to see what the gaming community has to say about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, winning the Best Debut Indie Game Award.Reactions to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 winning Best Debut Indie Game at The Game Awards 2025Gamers and netizens have battled it out online, talking about whether Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 deserves to be named the Best Debut Indie Game at the 2025 Game Awards.Here are a few of their opinions:@ArthurMorganthebest took to Reddit to share a post, criticizing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, for winning the title of Best Debut Indie Game. They said:"Clair Obscur winning the best indie game award is outrageous. Clair Obscur is AA, she shouldn't even be competing."@Cottrello added to the discussion by saying:"It feels like a bigger budget game because it had a publisher that put over 10 million dollars into the game. How is it independent if it has a publisher? By your logic Death Stranding should be up do the award too, Kojima Productions is not owned either."@Blacksad9999 also criticized the game for winning the "Indie" title. They expressed:"An indie game is a game made by a small team without financial backing or technical assistance from a publisher. That's what "independent" means. This wasn't made by a small team, and was financially backed by Kepler Interactive. They had a budget, technical and financial backing, and over 500 people worked on the game. They were able to book Andy Serkis and Charlie Cox, ffs. lol The exact opposite of an indie."On the other hand, there are others (@saypoop) who defended the game, saying:"The budget was under 10 million. The team is 30 people. Their publisher literally is a collection of indie devs that only put out indie games. Outsourcing doesn't mean you aren't indie. It’s a f**king indie game get over it."@Bippogriff also added to the conversation, writing:"Another classic example of people not understanding what Indie means. Claire obscur is indie. I've never played the game and I don't really care that it won, but it's still an indie game. Baldurs gate 3 was also an indie game."Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won Best Debut Indie Game, but many gamers disagreed with the result. Some said the game was not truly indie because it had a big budget and publisher support. Others argued it still counts as indie, which led to a big debate in the gaming community.Also read: BAFTA Games Awards Longlist 2026: Complete contenders list explored