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Big Walk's studio says an AI chatbot helped with about 10 lines of code. Steam reviews split the next day

SummaryHouse House, the studio behind Untitled Goose Game, says LLM use touched well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code, mostly one shadow bug fix. Negative Steam reviews jumped from 1 to 366 in a day, and positive ones jumped too. The game is still rated Very Positive.

· MODEL Editors · 2 min read

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Cartoon meme on a cream background. Headline: Ten lines of code. Two armies. Left panel: a tall page of gray code lines, labeled The game's code, to scale (with a note that the AI part is enlarged so you can see it), with a magnifying glass on one tiny red line labeled the AI part, about 10 lines, well under 0.1%. Right panel: a bar chart of Steam reviews by day: Nov 9, 94 up and 1 down; Nov 10, 426 up and 366 down, with a bubble saying Both sides showed up. Watermark: MODEL · readmodelmag.com.
Ten lines of code, two armies. Steam review counts are Steam's own daily history (UTC days), checked Nov. 12, 2026. Illustration by MODEL. Original. Image source.

What happened. House House, the Australian studio behind Untitled Goose Game, added an AI section to the Big Walk FAQ (opens in a new tab) this week. It says that "in the final stretch" of development, "LLMs were used sparingly" to work through hard bugs, and that "well under 0.1% of Big Walk's code had anything to do with this usage." It says generative AI wasn't used anywhere else in the game, which came out on Steam on Aug. 4.

The ten lines. The studio's example: Unity's URP renderer only culled shadow casters by distance in front of the camera, so shadows behind the player were drawn at infinite distance. That made the game run 50% slower for about 20 seconds at every sunrise and sunset. The team says it researched the problem, read the URP code and asked an engineer at Unity, who concluded what they wanted wasn't possible. Then they asked an LLM chatbot. "After a few dead ends, it suggested a possible fix, and while we had to modify the suggestion extensively, it worked," the FAQ says. "This fix represented about 10 lines of code inside URP."

Why it came out now. House House says it first wrote the disclosure for its Independent Games Festival submission, and posted it publicly because the topic "has become a matter of public interest." The Verge (opens in a new tab) and Nintendo Life (opens in a new tab) report it followed a statement from a group of IGF jurors saying they wouldn't vote for games that use generative AI in any capacity. The studio says it didn't disclose anything on Steam because Steam doesn't ask about code or chatbot use. It also says the disclosure "is not an endorsement" of AI tools, apologizes that its use "may not meet" some people's standards, and calls its lack of an internal AI policy "a failure" it will fix.

The reviews. Steam's own review history for Big Walk (UTC days, checked at 8:21 p.m. PT on Nov. 12):

  • Nov. 9: 94 positive, 1 negative.
  • Nov. 10: 426 positive, 366 negative.
  • Nov. 11: 652 positive, 130 negative.

So the negative reviews spiked, and so did the positive ones. Dexerto (opens in a new tab) reported the same Nov. 10 numbers. The store page still rates the game Very Positive: 87% of 5,591 reviews from the last 30 days and 94% of 31,606 English-language reviews are positive. Ars Technica (opens in a new tab) notes Steam's review-bomb tools appear to be limiting the effect on the overall score.

The takeaway for builders. Big Walk shows where the line is now for some players: not "did AI make the art" but "did AI touch the code at all." If you ship to an audience that cares, say what you used and how much before someone asks. House House's own fix for next time is a written AI policy.

Disclosure: MODEL hasn't played or tested Big Walk. Not sponsored. No affiliate links.

MODEL Editors

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Sources

  1. Big Walk FAQ: Was AI used to make Big Walk?

    House House

  2. Big Walk on Steam

    Steam

  3. Big Walk used AI to fix a bug. Now the indie gaming world is having a reckoning

    Ars Technica

  4. Big Walk review bombed after House House admits AI touched well under 0.1% of code

    Dexerto

  5. The indie game community is in disarray over AI and Big Walk

    The Verge

  6. Big Walk Devs Issue Statement Over AI Usage

    Nintendo Life

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