Big Walk devs say AI touched under 0.1% of its code
House House says LLMs helped with under 0.1% of Big Walk's code, after 19 IGF jurors said they won't vote for games made with generative AI.
10th Nov 2026 13:45
Image via House House / Panic
Big Walk devs say AI touched under 0.1% of its code
House House says LLMs helped with under 0.1% of Big Walk's code, after 19 IGF jurors said they won't vote for games made with generative AI.
10th Nov 2026 13:45
Image via House House / Panic
House House, the Australian studio behind Untitled Goose Game, has confirmed that large language models were used during the final stretch of Big Walk's development, but says the AI-assisted work accounts for "well under 0.1 percent" of the game's code.
The statement, added to a new section of the FAQ on Big Walk's official website and reported by Kotaku and Nintendo Life on November 10, follows a statement from 19 Independent Games Festival jurors, approved by IGF leadership according to Kotaku, saying they would decline to vote for any game that uses generative AI in any capacity.
Honk if you've read the FAQ
According to the statement, the studio used LLMs "sparingly" to help work through difficult technical challenges and bugs, and Nintendo Life reports that code snippets were sometimes adapted for the game, with House House saying generative AI wasn't used in any other part of development.
The studio gives one example, as reported by Nintendo Life, where an LLM suggested a fix for a shadow problem in Unity that was slowing the game by around 50% at sunrise and sunset, and the roughly 10-line suggestion had to be heavily modified before it actually worked.
House House is also clear that this isn't an endorsement of AI tools, saying the statement is "not an endorsement of, or argument for, the use of AI tools, however minimal", and it admits it didn't have an internal AI policy, which it calls a failure and plans to put right. Nintendo Life adds that Big Walk had been voluntarily submitted for the IGF Awards, and that the studio hadn't disclosed anything on Steam, whose AI disclosure doesn't ask about chatbot help with code.
What is Big Walk again?
Big Walk is a co-op online "walker-talker" published by Panic, where you and your friends wander a big open world and chat as you go, which is a lot gentler than terrorising a village as a goose (though no less chaotic once your mates start wandering off). It launched on August 4 on PC, Switch 2 and PS5, costs £15.99 on Steam, and Nintendo Life says it passed a million sales in under a week.
If you missed it first time round, our piece from when Untitled Goose Game's devs revealed Big Walk is a good place to start.
The IGF debate looks like it'll run for a while yet, but for now House House has laid its cards on the table. Well, at least nobody's blaming the goose.
About The Author
Jake Bannister
Jake is GGRecon's Co-Founder and Operations Director. You'll find him covering our word game brain teasers, as well as sports games such as Football Manager and EA FC. He's also that teammate on your Rocket League team spamming "Wow!".
