Big Walk used AI to fix a bug. The independent gaming world must now be held accountable.

House House stated that it had not disclosed this use of the LLM for Great walkSteam released earlier this year because Valve “is not requesting disclosure of the code or use of the chatbot.” Indeed, Valve’s AI disclosure form for developers specifically states that it is about AI-generated content, not “efficiencies” coming from “modern game development environments (that) incorporate AI-based tools.”

However, the IGF Awards make no such distinction for the use of AI, leading House to mention its AI-assisted bug fix when submitting the game for review. A version of that disclosure is now being made public because “it has become a matter of public interest,” House said.

“This is not an endorsement or argument for the use of AI tools, no matter how minimal,” House wrote. “We are concerned that voluntary disclosures like this could contribute to the normalization of this technology, or its treatment as “inevitable.” We support the work of those trying to limit the damage generative AI does to video games and our world, and we apologize for that. Great walkUsing the LLM may not meet their standards.

All or nothing

Learning of the AI’s disclosure of House House was particularly painful for some IGF judges who had previously felt a special connection to Great walk. In a blog post discussing his feelings, IGF legal officer Austin Walker called the game a “remarkable” and “beautiful achievement”, with puzzles that “capture a range of games largely abandoned by the digital form”. Legal scholar Damon Reece shared in a blog post that the game is “really special to me” and that it gave him “a deep and powerful emotional response to being in a space that feels like home.”

But when it came to the IGF awards, Walker and Reece were among those who said even minimal use of AI tools outweighed that deep and abiding respect for the work itself.

“We have our hands on the lever here,” Reece wrote. “It’s a pain that it must happen (emphasis in original) to try to move our culture away from that. We must choose to speak out loud and clear on this topic, to prioritize human creativity and work, to tell the culture and the world that this is unacceptable to us. To do otherwise is pure cowardice.