Quick answer: Yes, but only a little, by House House’s own account. The studio says it used LLM chatbots late in Big Walk‘s development to research hard technical bugs, and estimates “well under 0.1%” of the game’s code had anything to do with it. No generative AI was used anywhere else, it says. Current as of November 12, 2026.
House House, the studio behind Untitled Goose Game, has added a new entry to the official Big Walk FAQ titled “Was AI used to make Big Walk?” The answer has put the Panic-published co-op game at the center of indie gaming’s AI argument.
What House House says it did
According to the FAQ, LLMs “were used sparingly” in the final stretch of development “to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs.” In some cases, snippets from chatbot responses were copied as a starting point and then modified into game code.
Its example: Unity’s URP renderer only culls shadow casters by distance in front of the camera, so shadows behind the player were drawn at an infinite distance. That made Big Walk run 50% slower for around 20 seconds at sunrise and sunset. The team researched it, read the URP code, and asked a Unity engineer, who concluded it wasn’t possible. Then they asked a chatbot. After a few dead ends it suggested a fix, which the team “had to modify extensively.” The result was about 10 lines of code inside URP.
Why it surfaced now
House House says it first wrote this disclosure for its Independent Games Festival submission, where it was a suggested part of the entry. It made no disclosure on Steam because “the platform does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage.” It is publishing it now “as it has become a matter of public interest.”
That interest came from the IGF jury. Ars Technica reports 19 members of the 50-plus member jury signed a statement declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI “in any capacity.” The Verge says signers include Sam Barlow and Lena Raine, and that the statement does not speak for the IGF itself.
The studio calls its own process a failure
The FAQ is not a defense. “This is not an endorsement of, or argument for, the use of AI tools, however minimal,” House House writes. It apologises to those trying to limit generative AI’s harm to games, and says Big Walk was made without an internal AI usage policy. “We consider that lack of policy a failure,” it says, promising a more comprehensive one going forward.
How players are reacting
Ars Technica counted over 400 new negative Steam reviews after the disclosure. The overall picture is still strong: as of 7:40 AM CT on November 12, Steam shows 87% of 5,398 reviews from the last 30 days as positive, and 94% of 31,312 English reviews, both rated Very Positive.
Big Walk also just won Critics’ Choice at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026. How the IGF vote treats it is now up to individual jurors.
Sources: House House’s official Big Walk FAQ, Steam store page (app 1478500), Ars Technica, The Verge. Image: official Big Walk screenshot, House House / Panic, via Steam.
