Big Walk AI Controversy Explodes as Developers Admit Using AI-Assisted Coding

House House clarifies that Big Walk used generative AI sparingly to investigate technical problems and resolve difficult programming bugs.

The indie gaming community is split after a discussion about the new co-op game Big Walk from developer House House. The kerfuffle began when some judges at the Independent Games Festival (IGF) said that they would not vote for any games that used generative AI.

In the aftermath, it was revealed that the devs used AI in the final stages of construction, and the conversation quickly turned to Big Walk. Early social media conversations suggested the studio made extensive use of large language models (LLMs), raising concerns about how much AI was used in the game's production.

House House later clarified, however, that their use of AI was severely limited. The developers said they used LLMs sparingly to help with difficult technical issues and bugs and that AI assistance made up less than 0.1% of the game's code. The studio added that it did not use generative AI in any other aspect of development.

The studio said it used chatbots mainly to solve problems, as the team had difficulty with third-party programming. House House cited a tech problem that ultimately led to introducing artificial intelligence. The devs were trying to fix sunrise and sunset, which made the game run 50% slower for about 20 seconds.

Big Walk engineers explain how artificial intelligence has become a key part of development.

The team dug into the issue and searched through the code of Unity's Universal Render Pipeline (URP) but couldn’t find a solution. Eventually, they reached out to a Unity engineer, spoke with others, and learned that the proposed solution may not be practical.

After several dead ends, the coders asked an LLM chatbot for guidance. The chatbot offered a potential solution, but House House said the approach would need significant customization to work. Finally, the patch was about 10 lines of code and was intended to fix the performance issue.

The creators also said they hadn't disclosed their use of Steam before because the platform doesn't require disclosure of code or chatbot assistance. However, following the public debate, the House House said it would disclose its use of AI because the issue had become a matter of public concern.

The discussion soon spilled onto social media, as gamers argued whether any AI help should affect a game's eligibility for rewards, no matter how small. Some critics questioned why Big Walk doesn't have an AI disclosure label on Steam, while others said generative AI, in any form, should be banned.

The gaming community is having a much wider issue around limited AI coding help.

The incident also seems to bring negative attention to the game, with review-bombing discussions on Steam. Games were being pulled from prizes because they apparently didn't have enough AI-assisted programming. But the case begs wider questions about how AI should be treated throughout game development.

Asking a chatbot to help you with a programming problem is a world away from using AI to produce artwork, characters, dialogue, or other creative elements. AI-assisted coding can help developers discover and fix errors, identify technical problems, and improve quality assurance processes without taking away the creative work of human coders.

Ultimately, the Big Walk debacle is a lesson in how complex AI disclosure and adoption have become within the game business. Other studios will no doubt have similar concerns as they experiment with these capabilities, especially when developers release AI assistance without users' knowledge.