Indie darling Big Walk has found itself in hot water as developer House House admits to previously undisclosed AI usage "in the final stretch" of its co-op game's development, which it says touched "well under 0.1%" of the code.
This has surfaced after a statement from a group of jurors on the Independent Games Festival (IGF) was shared on Bluesky, acknowledging the "significant increase in the number of submitted games developed with generative AI tools" for the upcoming awards show. The group – which doesn't speak for IGF leadership or every juror – outlines the many issues with AI, from "ecological harms" to "cognitive and psychological harms to its users" and "harms to labor and worker power in creative fields," and says "we are declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity." That includes everything, be it artwork, voice acting, or indeed, code.
It's code that Big House developer House House now admits that it used large language models for help with in a public statement shared on the game's FAQ page. The devs acknowledge that "a version" of this statement was sent to the IGF as "a suggested part" of its submission, but say that the reason there's no AI disclosure on its Steam page is because Valve "does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage," which is what House House used the tech for.
"In the final stretch of Big Walk's development, LLMs were used sparingly by House House to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs," its statement begins. "In some cases, snippets from LLM responses were copied as a starting point to be modified into game code – we'd estimate that well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code had anything to do with this usage, and generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game.
"The primary use case for House House's use of LLMs was to research, via chatbots, issues we encountered with third-party code."
The devs give an example of one use of AI. After running into an issue where the game was slowing down significantly at sunrise and sunset, they were unable to find a fix themselves or after asking an engineer working for game engine Unity. "Finally," House House says, the team asked an AI chatbot instead.
"After a few dead ends, it suggested a possible fix, and while we had to modify the suggestion extensively, it worked," House House says. "This fix represented about 10 lines of code inside URP [Universal Render Pipeline]."
Despite the studio's usage of the tech, House House says "this is not an endorsement of, or argument for, the use of AI tools, however minimal." It continues with an apology: "We have some concern that voluntary disclosures like this might contribute to the normalization of this technology, or its treatment as 'inevitable.' We support the work of those who are trying to limit the harm generative AI is doing to videogames and our world, and apologize that Big Walk's LLM usage may not meet their standards.
"Big Walk was developed without an internal AI usage policy in place, and we consider that lack of policy a failure. We will work to have a more comprehensive policy going forwards."
As you might expect, fans aren't exactly happy. Looking at Big Walk's reviews on Steam, there's been a huge spike in negative feedback posted today – compared to just one negative review yesterday and three the day before, at the time of writing, today's reviews are just 36% positive, with 156 giving it a big, red thumbs down, with a number also indicating that they've refunded the title.
"Undisclosed use of AI to finish their game. This is a misrepresentation of the quality and effort put into an otherwise wonderful game. What a disappointment," reads one. "I wish I could still love this game. It is maddening," says another. "I find the lack of AI disclosure disturbing, upsetting, and very disappointing. If it hadn't already been a few months since I bought this, I would be making a point to refund it," another writes.
I suspect we'd be seeing many more refunds if it wasn't for the fact that this information has only just surfaced five months since Big Walk's launch, at a point where the majority of players are likely well past the date – and playtime – that would make them eligible to get their money back on Steam.
As disappointing as the news is for many, Big Walk is far from the only well-loved game to find itself in the center of a, uh, Big Backlash for AI usage. Last year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 saw two of its wins at The Indie Game Awards (including Game of the Year) revoked after what appeared to be AI-generated textures were discovered (and then quietly, and quickly, patched out) of the J'RPG. Crimson Desert similarly patched out a bunch of AI-generated assets after its launch earlier this year.
