Big Walk AI Use Sparks Indie Game Community Backlash

WHO:

The Verge - The Independent Games Festival (IGF) jurors who signed the AI statement included Sam Barlow, creator of *Telling Lies* and *Immortality*, and Lena Raine, composer of *Celeste*.

The Verge - House House, the Australian studio behind *Big Walk* and *Untitled Goose Game*, disclosed its use of generative AI tools.

The Verge - Barlow said *Big Walk* was not the “impetus” for the IGF discussion, but became a “tricky edge case.”

GamesIndustry.biz - The IGF jurors said they would not vote for games developed with generative AI and urged the festival to adopt a strong anti-AI policy.

CNET - The article reported that most AI-made games on Steam had 10 or fewer gamer reviews.

WHAT:

The Verge - IGF jurors said there had been a “significant increase” in games developed with generative AI tools and described “fairly intense discussion and disagreement” without “universal consensus.”

The Verge - House House estimated that “well under 0.1%” of *Big Walk*’s code involved copied LLM-response snippets that were modified into game code. It said generative AI was not used in any other context during development.

GamesIndustry.biz - House House said an LLM chatbot suggested a fix for a Unity rendering problem; after extensive modification, the fix amounted to about 10 lines of code inside Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline.

GamesIndustry.biz - House House said the rendering issue made the game run 50% slower for around 20 seconds at sunrise and sunset.

The Verge - The jurors’ statement said AI-generated code was “not an exception” to generative AI’s harms and that AI use was “not a forgone conclusion” for the industry.

The Verge - The jurors said their statement did not represent the IGF organization or all jury members; some worried about “professional blowback” from signing.

The Verge - House House said it had no internal AI policy during *Big Walk*’s development, called that lack a “failure,” and said it would work on a more comprehensive policy.

WHERE:

GamesIndustry.biz - House House said Steam does not request disclosure of code or chatbot usage, so it had not disclosed its AI use on the game’s Steam page.

GamesIndustry.biz - The Unity rendering issue involved Unity URP, which House House said did not allow shadow casters to be culled by distance behind the player.

WHEN:

GamesIndustry.biz - The IGF submissions closed on September 13; finalists were scheduled to be announced in January 2027.

GamesIndustry.biz - The jurors’ statement concerned the 2027 IGF.

WHY:

The Verge - House House said it primarily used LLMs to research, through chatbots, problems involving third-party code, including a difficult shadow-rendering bug.

The Verge - House House said its disclosure was not an endorsement of AI and expressed concern that voluntary disclosures could normalize the technology or make it seem “inevitable.”

The Verge - Barlow said the discussion concerned what an IGF award should represent as an “indie” alternative to mainstream and larger-scale game development.

HOW:

GamesIndustry.biz - House House said it researched the shadow issue, examined URP code, and spoke with a Unity engineer before asking an LLM chatbot for help. The chatbot suggested a possible fix after several dead ends; the studio modified it extensively.

GamesIndustry.biz - House House said it had written a version of its disclosure for its IGF submission, where disclosure was suggested as part of the submission.

(UPDATED November 10, 2026 23:02 UTC)

IGF jurors vowed not to vote for games made with generative AI, urging stronger rules. House House disclosed limited AI-assisted code in Big Walk, after modifying a chatbot’s rendering fix. The studio called its lack of an AI policy a failure and plans comprehensive guidelines.