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Horses, a first-person narrative horror game, was banned from the Epic Games Store just hours before it was set to launch on December 2nd. Then, a day after launch, the Humble store banned it as well. The decision shocked the developers at Santa Ragione, makers of the critically respected Saturnalia, as these storefronts were the homes they’d found for their game two years before it was preemptively banned from Steam.
Valve and Epic say Horses violates their sexual content policies. Humble hasn’t yet said why it banned the game after hosting it for several hours post-launch. However, Santa Ragione claims neither Epic nor Valve has clearly explained what exactly in the game is objectionable, and that these decisions have put the studio in peril of shutting down. The back-and-forth has catapulted Horses from a little-known prestige indie title to the next battleground in the fight between game storefronts, indie developers, content policies, and creative expression.
Though all the action kicked off late last month, Horses’ story officially began two years ago. In a lengthy FAQ, the developers explained that in 2023, Horses was rejected during Steam’s review process without explanation. “Steam’s policy grants broad discretion to refuse titles without providing detailed explanations. In our case, they simply stated they could not legally distribute Horses without clarifying why,” the FAQ reads.
In Horses, you play as a farmhand at a ranch where the horses are human. Image: Santa Ragione
In an interview with IGN, Pietro Righi Riva, one half of the team at Santa Ragione, said that the ban might have been caused by a scene involving a man and his daughter visiting a ranch where the titular “horses” are humans wearing horse masks. The daughter wants to ride one of the horses, which the player facilitates. “What followed was an interactive dialogue sequence where the player is leading, by a lead as if they were a horse, a naked adult woman with a young girl on her shoulders,” Riva said.
He said that scene was part of a rough demo sent to Steam to satisfy the platform’s request for a playable build so Horses could get a “Coming Soon” page. Riva said that, ultimately, the character was changed in the final build. “We have since changed the character in the scene to be a twenty-something woman, both to avoid the juxtaposition and more importantly because the dialogue delivered in that scene, which deals with the societal structure in the world of Horses, works much better when delivered by an older character.”
“Our requests for review and appeal were denied over and over.”
The studio stresses that Steam never explicitly explained why Horses was banned nor responded to any of Santa Regione’s follow-up appeals and communications. “For two years we asked for clarifications and a path to compliance, but we were directed to Steam’s general guidelines and our requests for review and appeal were denied over and over,” the FAQ reads.
In November, after Santa Ragione shared Horses’ release date and the reason why it wouldn’t be sold on Steam, Valve finally responded. A statement to gamedeveloper.com read:
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