House House disclosed that LLMs were used sparingly to fix a bug in Big Walk. The disclosure has divided Independent Games Festival judges and players over AI use in indie games.
Indie game Big Walk is at the center of a debate over AI use in game development after developer House House disclosed that LLMs were used sparingly near the end of development to help work through technical challenges and bugs.
House House said the AI use represents "well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code." The studio consulted an LLM chatbot about a Unity engine bug involving "infinite length" shadows. After a Unity engineer determined a fix "wasn't possible," the chatbot suggested a fix that developers modified extensively into 10 lines of code in the final game.
House House said it did not disclose the LLM usage for the Steam release because Valve "does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage." The studio mentioned the AI-assisted bug fix when submitting the game for IGF Awards consideration, and made the disclosure public because "it has become a matter of public interest."
The studio added: "This is not an endorsement of, or argument for, the use of AI tools, however minimal."
A group of 19 members of the Independent Games Festival Awards jury released a signed statement "declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity." The jurors cited AI's ecological, economic, psychological, and labor harms, and urged the IGF to "adopt a strong anti-AI policy for future years that disallows games containing any AI-generated work."
IGF jurist Austin Walker called Big Walk "an achievement" that was "remarkable" and "beautiful," but said even minimal AI use overrode his respect for the work. Fellow jurist Damon Reece wrote that the game is "seriously special to me" and that speaking out is necessary to "prioritize human creativity and labour."
Other judges disagreed. IGF judge Liz Ryerson wrote that she did not find House House's AI use personally disqualifying and that "the fact that many acted like there aren't any levels to this and it's all the same is bothersome to me."
Since the disclosure, Big Walk's Steam page has been bombed with over 400 negative reviews, though Steam's anti-review-bomb tools appear to be limiting the impact on the game's overall "Very Positive" reception.
Game developer and professor Brendan Keogh wrote that he thinks "an extreme zero tolerance of any [generative AI] is ultimately counterproductive now." Narrative designer Hannah Nicklin wrote that "zero tolerance is a viable political position."
The case shows how even minimal, late-disclosed AI use can affect a game's award eligibility, reputation, and player reception in the indie game community.
Sources
This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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