House House Big Walk AI usage
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The gist
Australian studio House House said LLMs touched well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code.
The disclosure follows jurors refusing to vote for games built with generative AI.
Background
House House is the Australian indie studio behind Big Walk, a cooperative multiplayer adventure published by Panic, and the follow-up to Untitled Goose Game. In November 2026 a group of jurors for the 2027 Independent Games Festival (IGF, an indie games awards event) said they would not vote for any game developed with generative AI, citing a significant increase in such submissions. House House had already submitted Big Walk to the IGF with a suggested AI disclosure; when social media discussion linked the jurors' statement to the game, the studio issued a public clarification.
How it unfolded
- Sep 13, 2026Submissions for the 2027 IGF closed, with Big Walk among the submitted games; finalists are due in January 2027.
- Nov 9, 2026A group of 2027 IGF jurors posted that they would not vote for any game developed with generative AI, citing a significant increase in such submissions.
- Nov 10, 2026House House told Aftermath it used LLMs sparingly in the final stretch of development, estimating well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code was involved.
- Nov 10, 2026House House said it wrote a version of the disclosure for its IGF submission, posted it publicly because it had become a matter of public interest, and did not disclose on Steam because the platform does not request it.
- Nov 10, 2026House House called the absence of an internal AI usage policy a failure and said it will work toward a more comprehensive policy.
Key terms
- LLMs
- A machine learning model trained on huge amounts of text to generate, summarize, translate, and analyze language.
- IGF
- An annual festival at the Game Developers Conference that promotes independent video game developers and innovation.
- generative AI
- Subfield of AI that uses models to create new text, images, audio, video or code from prompts.
Source: Wikipedia
Who’s saying what
- Jurors
- The 2027 IGF jurors said they are declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity and urged the IGF to adopt a strong anti-AI policy.
- Developer
- House House said the LLM use was limited to research and bug fixes, that it is not an endorsement of AI tools, and that it apologises the usage may not meet critics' standards.
Still unverified
Aftermath reported that the jurors did not name any games in their statement and that the link to Big Walk emerged through social media discussion.