Big Walk Voice Chat Too Quiet: Intended Mechanic or Known Bug?

In Big Walk, voices getting quieter as friends walk away, sounding muffled through walls, echoing down corridors, and distorting over walkie-talkies are all intended mechanics, not bugs. But if a friend stands right next to you with a clear line of sight and still sounds far too quiet, that matches a known issue the developers have officially acknowledged and said they are fixing.

One status warning before anything else: as of Big Walk 1.4.7, checked on August 7, 2026, the official version history does not list this low-volume issue as fixed. Do not assume a patch already solved it, and do not let anyone tell you the fix is just “stand closer.”

What is normal: proximity voice by design

The official FAQ and official gameplay material describe voice as a physical system:

• Distance falloff: the farther someone is, the quieter they get. Shouting across a valley is not supposed to work.
• Occlusion: walls and rock between you and a teammate muffle their voice.
• Space: corridors and enclosed areas add echo.
• Walkie-talkies: voices coming through a walkie-talkie are deliberately distorted.

Text chat follows the same distance and occlusion rules. So if you cannot hear someone who is far away or behind a wall, the game is working as designed — close the distance, get line of sight, or grab a walkie-talkie.

What is a bug: the known low-volume issue

Separately from the design above, the developers have officially confirmed that on some devices, friends sound much quieter than intended even when players are very close together. The acknowledgment appeared in an official Steam announcement and in the FAQ, and PC Gamer covered it. The team has said it is working on a fix.

What remains unknown, and what we will not guess at: which platform and device combinations are hit hardest, whether the game has (or will get) a per-player receive-volume control, and which version will ship the fix. The 1.4.7 notes list other improvements but do not mention this issue, so its status is “known, not confirmed fixed” (needs in-game verification once a patch claims otherwise).

Run the close-range test first

Before changing any settings, rule out the intended mechanics with a controlled test:

1. Move to an open area — no walls, no corridors.
2. Have two players stand close together and talk at a normal volume.
3. Compare direct voice, walkie-talkie, and text chat for the same sentence.

If direct voice is still dramatically quieter than it should be at point-blank range, stop asking people to lean in — treat it as the known issue and work through the checks below.

Safe checks in the official order

These steps come from the official FAQ. They are safe, reversible, and worth doing even if you suspect the bug:

1. System level: each player raises their own input (microphone) volume and keeps the mic close to their mouth. Quiet senders are the most common cause of quiet voice.
2. In game: open Settings > Audio and watch Microphone Activity to confirm the game actually sees your input.
3. Physical and OS: check that plugs are seated, hardware mute switches are off, and no external app (recording or voice software) is holding the microphone.
4. In-game mute state: make sure Mute Mode is not enabled, and confirm you have not been silenced by moderation.
5. Echo problems: echo usually means a microphone is picking up your own speakers — find the feedback source (speaker volume, an open mic elsewhere) rather than turning everything down.
6. Restart the affected client fully and retest at close range.
7. Still broken? Record the platform, device, game version, distance, whether walls were involved, and your exact reproduction steps. Until the official status changes, that is a known-issue report, not user error.

Community-reported cases (not universal fixes)

Individual players have reported specifics that may help, all of which we label as community-reported rather than verified fixes:

• A Steam review describes barely hearing a teammate at close range inside the tutorial room. The direction matches the official known issue, but the review lacks device and settings detail (community-reported).
• One PS5 player restored voice by clearing a “Game Chat muted” state on the console, and the original poster confirmed it worked — a single case, cheap to check if you are on PS5 (community-reported).
• A separate PlayStation Portal case, where party chat was wrongly detected as active, remains unresolved at the time of writing (community-reported).

Try these because they are low-risk, not because they are guaranteed. Driver changes, reinstalls, and similar heavy fixes have no supporting evidence in the sources we checked.

When in doubt, use text

Text chat can carry an entire session with no microphone at all. It obeys the same distance and occlusion limits as voice, but it is immune to the low-volume issue, bad microphones, and platform chat quirks. If one player’s audio is unreliable tonight, route the important calls through text and keep walking — then re-check the official FAQ and version history after the next patch.

Related guides

• Can’t join the session at all? Work the connection checklist
• How groups, join codes, and host saves work
• Beginner tips for communication and pacing