House House reveals generative AI used for under 0.1% of Big Walk code

The boundary between technical assistance and the use of generative AI has become a critical point of contention for indie developers, as evidenced by a recent disclosure from House House. The studio, known for the hit Untitled Goose Game, has revealed that Large Language Models (LLMs) were utilized during the final stretch of development for their latest title, Big Walk.

This admission comes as a voluntary disclosure tied to the game's submission for the Independent Games Festival (IGF) awards. The timing is particularly sensitive, as a group of IGF jurors—including Sam Barlow, Austin Walker, and Lena Reine—recently signed a statement declaring their intention to decline votes for any game that employs generative AI in any capacity. The jurors specifically noted that AI-generated code is not an exception to these concerns, placing Big Walk under scrutiny as it was being considered for the awards.

Technical Implementation and Scope

To clarify the extent of the technology's role, House House stated that LLMs were used sparingly and exclusively to resolve difficult technical bugs and challenges. The developers estimate that well under 0.1% of the code in Big Walk was influenced by this usage, and they emphasized that generative AI was not used in any other context during the production of the game.

The studio provided a specific example of this usage involving the Unity Universal Render Pipeline (URP). The developers encountered an issue where shadow casters behind the player were not being culled, causing the game to run 50% slower for approximately 20 seconds during sunrise and sunset. After extensive internal research and a consultation with a Unity engineer who concluded the fix was impossible, the team turned to an LLM chatbot. While the chatbot initially provided several dead ends, it eventually suggested a fix that the developers had to modify extensively. The final result was a working solution consisting of roughly 10 lines of code.

Policy and Industry Standards

Despite the minimal amount of code involved, House House described the lack of an internal AI usage policy during development as a failure. The studio expressed concern that voluntary disclosures of this nature could contribute to the normalization of generative AI or foster a perception that the technology is inevitable. In their statement, the developers apologized if their usage did not meet the standards of those working to limit the harm generative AI may cause to the gaming industry and the wider world.

This disclosure was not made on Steam, as the platform currently does not request the disclosure of chatbot usage or AI-generated code. House House noted that they are only speaking publicly on the matter now because it has become a matter of public interest. This transparency follows the commercial success of Big Walk, which launched in August 2026 to critical acclaim and reached one million sales in less than a week.

The situation highlights a growing rift in the industry regarding the definition of "generative AI." While some view LLM-assisted coding as a pragmatic tool for debugging, others, including the aforementioned IGF jurors, view any such integration as a breach of creative integrity. As House House works to implement a more comprehensive internal policy, the outcome of the IGF deliberations may serve as a bellwether for how the independent community treats AI-assisted technical fixes moving forward.