Big Walk developer admits to using AI to create its co-op hit

House House, the indie studio behind Untitled Goose Game, has admitted to using an LLM chatbot in order to fix bugs in its latest game Big Walk. While the developer estimates that less than “0.1% of Big Walk’s code” was related to generative AI usage, players have voiced their disappointment over the studio’s failure to disclose the use, in particular on Steam, where people often go to check if AI was used in a game’s development

A section has been added to Big Walk’s FAQ page which outlines how AI was used in the game’s creation claiming that “the primary use case for House House’s use of LLMs was to research, via chatbots, issues we encountered with third-party code.” It gives the example that the team struggled to find a way to prevent the large shadows that were cast during sunrise and sunset. Further the FAQ states that there is no AI disclosure on Steam “as the platform does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage.”

The FAQ states that House House is working towards establishing a “more comprehensive [AI] policy”, but does not say it will avoid or prohibit AI use in the future. This addition to the FAQ was made after 19 members of the Independent Games Festival’s jury put out a statement regarding the large number of games submitted to the competition that used generative AI tools in their development.

It reads, “There has been a significant increase in the number of submitted games developed with generative AI tools. This has set off some fairly intense discussion and disagreement across the judge and jury pools and at this point there is no universal consensus on what (if anything) is to be done.” It goes on to list the ecological, economic, cognitive, informative and psychological harms generative AI use can cause.

The letter ends by stating “for these reasons, this year we are declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity. We urge the IGF to adopt a strong anti-AI policy for future years that disallows games containing AI-generated work.” It’s signed by prominent independent developers, including Sam Barlow, creator of Her Story and Immortality.

On social media players are not only commenting on their disappointment over the use of AI but also about the company’s lack of disclosure. One indie developer on Bluesky writes, “the chief disappointing thing about this situation to me is how House House used the publicity of being conscientious game developers to promote the public image of the game knowing damn well that if this got out the narrative would go sour.”

House House has garnered a fanbase through a number of its principled stances. Untitled Goose Game includes a land acknowledgement to the Wurundjeri people from whom the studio’s city, Melbourne, was colonized. The company also put out a statement that Big Walk would not be published on Xbox due to the ongoing BDS boycott of Microsoft products over its connections to Israel. Actions like these clash with the idea that not only would the studio use generative AI, but it would fail to disclose this use to the public.