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

What happened: House House publicly and belatedly disclosed minimal AI use in its indie game Big Walk, after using AI to fix a bug. The disclosure triggered a controversy in indie game development. Key numbers: 19 members of the 50-plus-member Independent Games Festival jury signed a statement declining to vote for any game that uses generative AI in Why it matters: Jurors cited a significant increase in submitted games developed with generative AI tools and called out AI's ecological, economic, psychological, and labor harms, saying its use is not a foregone conclusion in the industry.

House House publicly and belatedly disclosed minimal AI use in its indie game Big Walk, after using AI to fix a bug. The disclosure triggered a controversy in indie game development.

Jurors cited a significant increase in submitted games developed with generative AI tools and called out AI's ecological, economic, psychological, and labor harms, saying its use is not a foregone conclusion in the industry.