Beloved Co-Op Adventure Big Walk in Hot Water After Failing to Disclose AI Usage

Walk of shame

Big Walk, one of the most highly-rated games of 2026, has suddenly found itself in a spot of bother, and it's all thanks to those controversial AI tools.

This story stems from the Independent Games Festival Awards (IGF); some of the jurors have taken a hard stance against usage of generative AI or LLM technology.

These jurors recently put out a statement in which they condemn the tech, and in the aftermath of this, it's come out that developer House House did in fact use gen AI, albeit in a minor capacity, when making Big Walk.

On the game's official website, this is now addressed directly in a new FAQ page.

In the statement, House House says LLMs were used "sparingly" near the end of the game's production "to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs."

"In some cases, snippets from LLM responses were copied as a starting point to be modified into game code—we’d estimate that well under 0.1% of Big Walk’s code had anything to do with this usage, and generative AI was not used in any other context when making the game."

The statement goes on to provide an example of how and why the tech was used.

Ultimately, it seems the team has utilised AI very minimally, but that its use was not previously disclosed has rubbed people the wrong way.

Usually, generative AI usage is declared on a game's Steam page, but House House says it didn't do so because "the platform does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage" but has made it public information in light of IGF's actions.

It opens up the debate about gen AI once again. Whether you like it or not, more and more games are being built with the tech to varying degrees, and I expect the number will only grow bigger over time.

However, its ubiquity doesn't safeguard it from criticism, especially when it comes to generating in-game assets, writing, or other creative aspects.

In Big Walk's case, an LLM was used to help with specific technical issues, which I think is relatively harmless, but others may still feel any gen AI is too much.

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What do you think of all this? Tell us in the comments section below.

[source bigwalk.game, via bsky.app, resetera.com]

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About Stephen Tailby

Stephen has been part of the Push Square team for over six years, bringing boundless enthusiasm and a deep knowledge of video games to his role as Assistant Editor. Having grown up playing every PlayStation console to date, he's developed an eclectic taste, with particular passion for indie games, arcade racers, and puzzlers. He's also our go-to guy for Sonic-related matters, much to his delight/chagrin.

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Comments 2

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• psmr
• 9 mins ago

Great game… AI or not!

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• themightyant
• 4 mins ago

Seems like a very sensible way to use a tool at their disposal.

Whether they admit it or not most studios are using AI in some form, often Gen AI for code, animation, bug fixing or optimisation making the "Uses Gen AI" tag a bit pointless imo - currently it's just a red rag for those that can't accept the winds of change.

We either need to be much clearer about how it is specifically used, which will get harder and more and more tools use it by default, or drop the tag altogether. It's currently not fit for purpose.

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