Key Takeaways
- House House confirms that it used generative AI sparingly during the final stages of Big Walk’s development.
- The Australian studio estimates that well under 0.1% of the game’s code was connected to its use of large language models (LLMs).
- The disclosure comes after 19 jurors for the 2027 Independent Games Festival said they would refuse to vote for games developed using generative AI in any capacity.
- House House apologised for the lack of an internal AI policy and says it plans to introduce more comprehensive guidelines for future projects.
Generative AI has become one of the most divisive topics in the gaming industry, and even a small amount of AI-assisted development can now attract considerable attention. Australian developer House House, best known for Untitled Goose Game, has found itself in the middle of that debate after confirming that it used large language models (LLMs) while working on its acclaimed multiplayer puzzle adventure, Big Walk.
The studio says its use of generative AI was limited to the final stretch of development, primarily helping developers investigate difficult technical problems and fix bugs. House House estimates that well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code had anything to do with this process, stressing that AI was not used in any other aspect of the game’s creation.
The admission comes at an awkward time for the developer, as a group of jurors involved in the upcoming 2027 Independent Games Festival (IGF) awards has publicly announced that it will not vote for any game that used generative AI during development.
House House Says AI Influenced Well Under 0.1% of Big Walk’s Code
House House revealed its AI usage in a statement published on the official Big Walk FAQ. According to the developer, LLMs were used sparingly to work through technical challenges that proved difficult to solve during the game’s final development period.
The studio explained that developers occasionally copied snippets from chatbot responses as a starting point before modifying them for use in the game’s code. However, House House insists that this was an extremely limited part of the overall development process.
The studio’s main reason for using chatbots was to research problems involving third-party code. It also shared a specific example to explain why the team eventually turned to an LLM for assistance.
One particularly troublesome issue involved shadow rendering in Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline (URP). House House wanted to cull shadow casters based on their distance from the camera, but Unity URP only allowed this process to work in the direction the camera was facing. As a result, shadow casters behind the player could continue rendering at an effectively infinite distance.
This technical issue caused Big Walk to run around 50% slower for approximately 20 seconds during sunrise and sunset. The team says it spent considerable time researching the problem and examining the URP code itself, but struggled to find a workable solution.
House House even contacted a Unity engineer, who consulted with others and eventually concluded that the desired behaviour was not possible. After several unsuccessful attempts with an LLM chatbot, the tool suggested a potential workaround. The developers then heavily modified that suggestion until they found something that worked.
According to House House, the resulting fix amounted to approximately 10 lines of code inside Unity URP. The studio believes this example represents the limited nature of its AI usage rather than any attempt to hand over actual game development to a chatbot.
19 IGF Jurors Refuse to Vote for Games Made Using Generative AI
The timing of House House’s disclosure is particularly interesting because the 2027 Independent Games Festival has already become the centre of a heated discussion about AI-assisted game development.
A group of 19 IGF jurors recently published a statement declaring that they would not vote for any game that used generative AI in any capacity. The signatories include well-known developers and industry figures such as Austin Walker, Sam Barlow, Lena Raine, and Brendon Chung.
The group said it had noticed a significant increase in the number of game submissions involving generative AI tools. This reportedly sparked intense discussions and disagreements among the judging and jury pools, with no universal agreement on how the festival should approach the issue.
The jurors argue that the problems associated with generative AI extend beyond AI-generated artwork or music. Their concerns also cover environmental damage, economic pressure on developers and artists, working conditions, and the use of creative work to train AI models without the original creators’ consent.
Importantly, the statement does not represent every IGF juror or establish an official ban on AI-assisted games. It is a public position taken by a group of individual jurors, who have also urged the festival to introduce a stronger policy against games containing AI-generated work.
House House’s disclosure puts Big Walk directly in the middle of that discussion. Even though the studio describes its use as minimal, the jurors’ position makes no exception for AI-generated code. In other words, the small percentage of code involved may not change how the game’s use of AI is viewed by those signatories.
You can read the full statement from the 2027 IGF jurors to understand their position on generative AI in game development.
House House Apologises for Not Having an Internal AI Policy
House House also addressed why the AI usage was not disclosed when Big Walk was released. The developer explained that it had originally prepared a version of the disclosure as part of its IGF submission, but had not published anything on Steam because the platform does not request information about code or chatbot usage.
The studio says it decided to make the information public because it had become a matter of public interest. However, House House was also careful to clarify that its statement should not be interpreted as an endorsement of generative AI.
The developer acknowledged that even voluntary disclosures could contribute to normalising the technology or creating the impression that its adoption in game development is inevitable. It also expressed support for people working to limit the harm generative AI is causing to video games and the wider world.
Perhaps the most significant part of the statement is House House’s admission that Big Walk was developed without an internal AI usage policy.
The studio called this lack of guidelines a failure and apologised to those who feel the game’s limited LLM usage does not meet their standards. It also promised to work towards a more comprehensive policy for future projects.
Will the AI Controversy Affect Big Walk’s IGF Chances?
It remains to be seen how the controversy will affect Big Walk’s position in the 2027 Independent Games Festival awards. The jurors who signed the statement have made their position clear, but their announcement does not mean the entire festival has adopted the same approach.
For House House, the situation also highlights how difficult it can be to draw a line around AI use in modern game development. The studio describes its chatbot assistance as a limited technical resource that helped solve a stubborn programming problem. However, some developers and artists believe that even AI-generated code carries the same fundamental concerns as AI-generated visual and audio content.
That disagreement is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Game studios are facing increasing pressure to be transparent about the tools they use, while players and industry professionals continue to debate what should count as acceptable AI assistance.
Big Walk’s disclosure is another example of how that debate can reach even developers whose use of generative AI was limited to a handful of technical challenges. Whether the studio’s explanation satisfies the game’s critics or changes anyone’s position remains to be seen.
For more gaming news, check out our coverage of God of War Ragnarok becoming PlayStation’s highest-grossing game, the Mass Effect voice cast’s N7 Day campaign, and the Ocarina of Time remake glitch involving Young Link.
