Santa Ragione received an automated message from Valve stating Horses would not be approved for distribution on Steam and could not be resubmitted. The ‘why’ came as a shock to the studio. “While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us,” Steam’s automated response read, "we found that this title features themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won’t distribute. Regardless of a developer’s intentions with their product,
we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.
While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a ‘grey area’—it will be rejected by Steam."
I don’t think is an unfair line to draw by any measure, and while I sympathize with the studio I’m also not going to begrudge Valve taking a hard line on this, because there are absolutely games being submitted that will try to toe that line. I don’t think this studio is doing that, but I also think it’s fair for Valve to weigh art and impact vs peoples’ comfort, if they’re the ones being asked to host something.
. . . it’s about to venture into even stranger, darker territory with Horses, an unsettling first-person narrative horror adventure set on a farm whose livestock consists of naked masked humans.
“While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us,” Steam’s automated response read, “we found that this title features themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won’t distribute. Regardless of a developer’s intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor. While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a ‘grey area’—it will be rejected by Steam.”
. . . the studio now suspects a work-in-progress scene from day six of Horses’ narrative (the game follows the player across 14 days as they work as a hired hand on the farm where the “horses” are held) might be the culprit. In the early build reviewed by Valve, day six featured a scene in which a man and his young daughter visit the farm. The daughter wants to ride one of the horses, resulting in an interactive dialogue sequence where the girl rides on the shoulders of a naked “horse” while it’s led by the player. “The scene is not sexual in any way,” the studio notes in its FAQ, “but it is possible that the juxtaposition is what triggered the flag.”
. . . notably, the final version of Horses has been reviewed and approved for distribution across numerous other PC storefronts, including the Epic Games Store, GOG, the Humble Store, and Itch.io. And while Horses won’t be launching on consoles due to porting costs, Pietro says the console makers who’ve seen Horses have said they’d be “happy to have the game on [their] platform”.
From the description of the scene which seems to have triggered the refusal to platform the game, the studio probably pushed the envelope too far.
It just sounds like Italian B movie nonsense for the sake of being shocking. Not a hill I’d die on defending.
This is probably the fault of Collective Shout.
Valve is in a position where it has to weigh if a game will be deemed too unsavory and cause a response from payment processors. If this game becomes the tipping point then steam as a platform can no longer exist.
Getting the word out about games like this is probably the best thing that can happen at this point. It will put it on the radar of the people that are interested and it will let the art exist in a way that isnt totally ephemeral.
The refusal to sell the game on Steam was apparently before all the champing and gnashing of teeth which lead to a bunch of games being pulled; having a young child ride around on a naked masked person who is forced to comply would be contentious either way.
This seems dumb. Give it an X rating or whatnot and limit it to adult purchases.
Even rating it X/AO/Whatever, calling a sequence where a young child rides around on a naked masked person who is forced to comply “contentious” is putting it mildly.
yeah but thats the point of X. its not R. I mean clock work orange is all kinds of effed up but its a great movie. X means graphic sex, or violence, or worse. I think they had another designation at some point that was like super X but I think folks never really paid attention to it.
to me it feels more like the other shoe has dropped on the censorship stuff that was hitting Steam a few months ago. I understand how that scene is controversial, and even in a film context I think that one might be too much for most studios. But if this was November 2024, I think Steam would have greenlit this game without a second thought.
The article details how the refusal to platform the game was before the calls for games to be pulled by that weirdo conservative Christian group whose name I can’t remember.
The game looks extremely f*cked up too…
as all great horror is.
I do not agree this being great horror.
Well, neither of us have played it, so neither of us is really in a position to say whether the game is great or not. But that trailer seemed pretty damn spooky and unsettling to me, seems like the dev knows what they are doing. But again, I’m just going off that trailer in the article. Totally fine if this brand of horror is not your cup of tea, though.
I can judge a style and the art without playing the game. I just said how it looks to me. My earlier point was, if you make a game like that, you shouldn’t be surprised getting banned. And the creator does the best out of it and makes a scene of it. I would probably too, because it generates a lot of buzz and is free marketing. People who never had this in radar will either purchase or talk and make more marketing. So, I am not blaming him doing what he does right now.
I mean at one point in the trailer you see two real horses fucking (f*cked up literally). From what I see it’s not just horror, its about shocking. And I believe not every game should be on Steam. Where the line is, I don’t know.
Wait, I was able to see your point all the way through, but what is wrong with two horses fucking? You can see that on 100 farms within 20 minutes of me. That’s probably the least weird thing I’ve heard about this game.
You can also open up random porn websites and see stuff that shouldn’t be on Steam. Also having it randomly in nature is one thing, appearing in a shocker / horror videogame with the context of children want to ride naked horses (which are human with mask) riding is another. It’s all about context.
This just shows that Valve/Steam is way too powerful in games distribution. Another example of over-centralization in our modern world. My initial thought of course was “just move to itch.io or something”, but they claim no one will give them investment funds to develop games unless they can be on Steam, which is just insane.
it is insane out there for indies. The Steam issue is only part of the picture. Your big indie names like Supergiant and Landfall will keep trucking along because they have enough momentum and cache to ink deals with investors. But the smaller studios that are just getting off the ground? Investors have become very averse to signing with those teams, because they only see things in terms of ROI. It’s such a risky bet, and even if everything works out, the tiny payday is not worth it to these types. It is more lucrative to just invest that money in index funds.
Everyone says “it’s okay if AAA gaming collapses, we’ll still have indies to save us”, but we won’t have indies to save us for much longer if there is no funding out there for new studios.
“We had multiple publishers actively coming to us,” explains Pietro, “and be like, ‘Hey, we want to make this game.’” And many of those big publishers were initially unperturbed by Steam’s ban. “The main reaction,” he recalls, “was, ‘Leave that to me… I know everyone at Valve, let me figure it out’, and so they’d take the game, and a month later they’d come back and be like, ‘No, you’re fucked. Bye.’” And seemingly nothing will get Valve to budge. “We’ve tried everything,” Pietro continues. “I was already in touch with a real human being [at Valve] since our first onboarding on Steam… but they were like, ‘I’m sorry this happened… I don’t have insights on the reasons for the ban. I’ve brought your plea to the review team and they’ve declined to re-review and their decision is final.’”
Wtf? It sounds like someone powerful at Valve made a mistake and would rather let this studio close than admit it.
Edit : Caught this on a re-read. Definitely sounds more sussy now.
In the early build reviewed by Valve, day six featured a scene in which a man and his young daughter visit the farm. The daughter wants to ride one of the horses, resulting in an interactive dialogue sequence where the girl rides on the shoulders of a naked “horse” while it’s led by the player.
Yeah, I’m on the side of if it’s legal it should be allowed, but having read about the scene and watched the trailer I think it’s kind of disingenuous for the developer to pretend this was a surprise. Getting that on to steam would be a coin flip even without the recent controversies.
Feels like they’re just trying to use the controversy as publicity.
Given that it’s being allowed on multiple different platforms now that the “child riding a naked person in a horse mask” sequence has been removed, it definitely stinks of spin from the dev trying to get more publicity.
If it’s being allowed on multiple different platforms, I don’t klow what he’s complaining about.
Santa Ragione
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