House House disclosed limited chatbot assistance with technical problems while finishing Big Walk. The studio says developers modified suggestions before incorporating code and estimates that substantially less than 0.1 per cent of the code was connected to that process. The disclosure includes a shadow-rendering repair and a promise to develop a fuller internal AI policy.
House House, the game studio developing Big Walk, disclosed limited use of language-model chatbots during the final stages of development. It says developers used responses as starting points for code they subsequently modified. The studio estimates that substantially less than 0.1 per cent of the game’s code was connected to that process and says generative AI was used nowhere else in making the game.[1], [2]
The example involved Unity’s system for drawing game scenes. The objects behind the player continued casting shadows at excessive distances, causing roughly twenty seconds of slowdown around sunrise and sunset, according to the studio. After code inspection and consultation with a Unity engineer failed to resolve it, a chatbot eventually suggested an approach. Developers substantially changed it into a repair of about ten lines.[1]
House House disclosed the use in its Independent Games Festival submission but says Steam did not request equivalent disclosure for chatbot or coding help. 19 festival jurors had announced they would not vote for games developed using generative AI. Festival leadership permitted publication of that statement without endorsing its message. House House acknowledged having no internal AI policy during development and plans a more comprehensive one.[1], [2]
