Big Walk used AI to fix a bug. Now the indie gaming world is having a reckoning.
House House disclosed that LLMs were used sparingly, for well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code, to help fix a difficult Unity engine bug, after 19 members of the 50-plus-member Independent Games Festival jury signed a statement declining to vote for any game using generative AI in any capacity. House House said it did not disclose the use for the Steam release because Valve does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage, and said the disclosure is not an endorsement of AI tools. The game's Steam page has since received over 400 negative reviews, while some IGF judges and observers argued minimal AI use should be distinguished from heavier reliance on AI.