Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been a massively successful debut for developer Sandfall Interactive. It also hasn’t been without controversy. In December, the Indie Game Awards revoked two of its awards for its inclusion of AI-generated assets at launch. (They were quickly patched out.) Now, a French author is claiming the developer is forcing him to stop selling his newly released graphic novel, titled L’ Académie Clair-Obscur.
In a series of posts on X on Friday, author Olivier Gay claimed he “received a lawyer’s letter” from Sandfall, “which orders me to stop selling my comic published by Drakoo titled Académie Clair-Obscur, supposedly riding on the game’s undeniable success” (via machine translation).
According to Gay, he pitched his graphic novel to Drakoo in 2019 and has a contract from March 2024 with the current title of the graphic novel. (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was revealed in June 2024.) Though his graphic novel “has nothing to do with [Sandfall’s] story,” Gay is acquiescing because “I neither have the energy nor the money to engage in a legal battle, especially against French studios that I greatly appreciate.” Gay states his comic will continue under a different name, and he “hope[s] it keeps finding success.”
On Monday, Sandfall Interactive responded with a brief post on X. “Hello everyone, we’ve seen the discussions, thank you for bringing the situation to our attention. We’re in contact with the publisher and Olivier to find a fair solution for everyone.” When reached for comment, representatives for Sandfall Interactive redirected Polygon to the studio’s statement on X.
Gay is right that his book has no similarities to Expedition 33 in terms of its story or characters; it follows a group of students at the Clair-Obscur Academy, a magic school. As some users on X have pointed out, a sticking point may be the typography. At a passing glance, there are similarities between the way the titles are presented on the graphic novel and in the game. “If I happen to walk past your comic in a store, I do get the impression of dealing with a product derived from the game,” one person said. There are no official Expedition 33 tie-in comics at this time, but there is a sick vinyl collection and an art book that was mistakenly seized by government officials for looking like an ancient artifact.
Clair Obscur is a French translation of chiaroscuro from Italian art history, originating in the Renaissance period. It’s meant to refer to the juxtaposition between light and dark, which is a visual and thematic fundamental of Expedition 33. Sandfall has stated that Clair Obscur is meant to be the franchise name for its debut IP, with game director Guillaume Broche calling Expedition 33 “one of the stories that we want to tell in this franchise” in an interview last summer.
