Can a game be made without generative AI if its developers occasionally consult a chatbot to fix technical problems? The Big Walk AI debate has turned that question into a difficult test for independent gaming. House House has acknowledged limited use of large language models during development, but the controversy reveals something broader: game stores, award juries and developers do not necessarily share the same definition of acceptable AI use.
That distinction matters because Big Walk is not an unreleased experiment. The cooperative puzzle-adventure launched in August 2026 for PS5, Nintendo Switch 2, PC and Mac, earning strong reviews. Now, months after release, a disclosure about its development process has become part of a wider argument over transparency and creative responsibility.
Big Walk AI use was limited to technical problems, not creative content
House House, the Australian studio responsible for Untitled Goose Game, has explained that it occasionally consulted large language models during the final stages of Big Walk’s development. Its main purpose was investigating stubborn bugs and technical difficulties, particularly those involving third-party code.
According to the studio’s official Big Walk AI FAQ, some chatbot responses provided code snippets that developers subsequently adapted and modified for use in the game. House House estimates that considerably less than 0.1% of the final code was connected to this process. It also maintains that generative AI was not used for anything else.
One example involved a performance slowdown that the development team could not resolve, even after consulting a Unity engineer. Chatbots were used to investigate the problem. This detail helps explain the studio’s reasoning: the technology was treated as a troubleshooting resource rather than a system for generating characters, artwork, dialogue or other creative material.
However, that distinction does not eliminate every concern. A modified code fragment can still originate from an AI-generated response. For critics who oppose generative AI regardless of its application, the percentage involved may be less important than whether the technology entered the development process at all.
Why the Big Walk AI debate reached the IGF Awards
The timing of House House’s explanation is closely connected to discussions surrounding the 29th Independent Games Festival Awards. On November 9, 2026, 19 jury members published a joint statement declaring that they would not vote for games using generative AI in any capacity.
Their position followed a substantial increase in submissions involving the technology and intense internal debate. Big Walk was subsequently singled out on social media as one of the games connected to those discussions. As VGC reported on House House’s response, the developer had already disclosed its limited AI use when submitting the game to the festival.
There is an essential distinction here: Big Walk has not been officially disqualified from the IGF Awards. The published position belongs to those 19 jurors, who have individually committed not to vote for games involving generative AI. It should not be confused with a festival-wide eligibility rule.
Nevertheless, their stance creates a meaningful dividing line. Under a zero-use principle, employing an LLM to investigate a software bug can become as relevant to a voting decision as using generative AI to produce creative assets. That does not make the two practices identical. Instead, it shows how an ethical standard can deliberately cover a much wider range of activities than a conventional distinction between technical assistance and creative production.
The overlooked difference between debugging and AI-generated content
Much of the disagreement comes down to what people mean when they say a game was made with AI. The phrase can describe dramatically different workflows. A developer might ask a chatbot to explain an unfamiliar software error, incorporate modified AI-suggested code, or use a generative system to produce material that appears directly in the finished experience.
Those situations deserve separate consideration. Debugging assistance concerns the process of solving a technical problem. Content generation, meanwhile, can raise more immediate questions about artistic authorship and the origin of creative work. Both involve generative technology, yet their practical roles are not interchangeable.
That distinction also connects with broader industry conversations. Battle4Play previously explored Jackbox Games and the importance of human creativity in party games, where the relationship between technology and creative identity provides another perspective on the issue.
Similarly, Masahiro Sakurai’s discussion of generative AI offers relevant context for understanding why the technology has become such a sensitive subject in game development. The central question is not simply whether a tool is useful. It is also what developers consider acceptable, what audiences expect and which standards should apply.
House House’s explanation adds a particularly difficult case to that discussion. Its disclosure describes a narrow technical application rather than an AI-driven creative pipeline. Even so, a strict rejection of generative AI can reasonably include that application without making exceptions for scale or intent.
Steam’s disclosure rules leave a transparency gap
Another important part of this story concerns information that players receive before purchasing a game. House House says it did not disclose the chatbot use on Steam because the platform does not require developers to report AI-assisted code or chatbot consultations of this kind.
By contrast, the studio had already provided the information in its IGF submission. It has now made the explanation public because the issue attracted wider attention. Consequently, the same development practice was disclosed in one context but not another, without necessarily violating either process.
This exposes a limitation in how AI transparency currently operates. A store’s disclosure requirements and an awards jury’s ethical expectations serve different purposes. One determines what developers must report through a commercial platform; the other can influence how individual jurors assess creative work.
For players, however, the difference may not be obvious. Someone looking for a clear answer about AI involvement could interpret the absence of a Steam disclosure as evidence that no generative AI tools were used. The Big Walk case demonstrates why that conclusion would be unreliable.
There is also a risk in treating every form of AI involvement as a single category. A disclosure that simply says a game used generative AI might satisfy a demand for transparency while failing to explain whether that involvement concerned troubleshooting, modified code or finished creative assets. More precise descriptions would allow audiences to make better-informed judgments without requiring everyone to agree on the ethics.
What House House’s response means for future AI policies
House House has been careful not to present its experience as an endorsement of generative AI. The developer acknowledges concerns about the technology’s harmful effects and supports efforts to limit those harms. It also recognizes that public disclosures can unintentionally make AI tools appear normal or unavoidable within game development.
The studio has apologized to people whose standards its limited use may have failed to meet. More significantly, it admits that Big Walk was developed without a formal internal AI policy. House House considers that absence a failure and says it intends to establish a more comprehensive approach going forward.
That admission may ultimately be more instructive than the estimated fraction of code involved. Without a clearly defined policy, developers can make individual decisions about unfamiliar tools without an agreed framework for evaluating their implications. A studio might regard chatbot-assisted debugging as routine problem-solving, while an awards juror considers the same action incompatible with a game’s eligibility for their vote.
The Big Walk AI controversy therefore leaves independent developers with a practical challenge: define boundaries before technical decisions become public ethical disputes. House House has clarified what happened in this particular game, but its experience shows why transparency alone cannot settle disagreements about acceptable AI use.
Ultimately, the more useful question is not whether a tiny amount of AI-assisted code should automatically be treated like AI-generated artwork. It is whether developers, stores and award organizations can communicate their standards clearly enough for players to understand the difference. Big Walk has brought that unresolved problem into focus, and the debate extends well beyond one acclaimed indie release.
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