Big Walk AI Controversy: House House Says LLMs Touched Under 0.1% of Its Code

House House has clarified that it used large language models, or LLMs, during the final stretch of development on Big Walk. The Australian studio says it turned to chatbots to help investigate difficult technical problems and bugs. In some cases, developers used snippets from chatbot responses as starting points, then modified them for the game’s code.

The studio estimates that well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code had anything to do with this use. It also says generative AI was not used in any other part of the game’s development. The percentage is House House’s own estimate, not the result of an independent code audit.

What problem did the chatbot help solve?

House House gave a specific example involving the game’s shadows. The developers wanted Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline to stop rendering distant shadow casters. A limitation in how the system handled distance meant objects behind the player could still be rendered from an effectively unlimited distance.

According to the studio, the problem caused Big Walk to run about 50% slower for roughly 20 seconds around sunrise and sunset. The developers investigated the issue, inspected the Unity code and consulted a Unity engineer, but did not find a solution. A chatbot eventually suggested a possible workaround. House House says its team substantially modified the suggestion, which resulted in a fix involving about 10 lines of code.

The example helps explain what the studio means by AI assistance: it describes using a chatbot to explore a technical problem, not asking it to create the game’s art, story, music or other content. House House says generative AI was not used in any other context while making Big Walk.

Why has the disclosure sparked debate?

The disclosure came amid a wider debate over generative AI in games and the 2027 Independent Games Festival. A group of 19 IGF jurors said they would decline to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity, including code. The group argued that AI-generated code should be treated like other creative work in game development.

That position belongs to the signatories, not every IGF judge or the festival as a whole. The group’s statement says it does not speak for all IGF jury members or for the IGF organisation. House House has not said whether its disclosure will affect Big Walk’s consideration in the awards.

House House said it initially prepared a version of its disclosure for its IGF submission and later added details to Big Walk’s FAQ after the matter became public. The studio said it had not disclosed code or chatbot use on Steam because the platform does not ask for that information.

Big Walk studio House House has confirmed that it used AI during the development of the game. The confirmation follows an anti-AI statement from IGF Award jurors, believed to have been partly written as a result of jury debates about Big Walk's AI use. https://t.co/vj3vJIMnMu https://t.co/fcnQxsHvle

— VGC (@VGC_News) November 10, 2026

What is House House’s position on generative AI?

The studio says its disclosure should not be taken as an endorsement of AI tools. It expressed concern about the harms generative AI may cause to games and the wider world, and apologised to people who feel the use described does not meet their standards.

House House also acknowledged that Big Walk was made without an internal AI-use policy, calling that a failure. The studio says it plans to develop a more comprehensive policy for future work.

Is Big Walk still in development?

No. Big Walk is already released. House House’s official FAQ says the game became available on August 4, 2026, for Windows and Mac, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2. The AI disclosure concerns tools used during its development, not an upcoming feature or a planned change to the game.