An unsettling indie game about horses keeps getting banned from stores

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 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.”

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:

“After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines. A short while later the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed that extensively and communicated to the developer our final decision that we were not going to ship the game on Steam.”

The studio says the Steam ban put the company in financial peril, as it “completely erased our ability to find an external supporting publisher or partner to fund the rest of the game as no one in the industry considers an indie game that cannot be released on Steam to be viable.” Though the developers were able to continue work on Horses through investments from friends, unless the game’s a hit, they say the studio will shut down.

In the two years since Horses’ ban from Steam, Santa Ragione found several new homes for the game, including Itch.io, GOG, Humble, and the Epic Games Store. In a post on X, DRM-free storefront GOG said, “We’re proud to give Horses a home on GOG, giving players another way to enjoy the game. We’ve always believed that players should be able to choose the experiences that speak to them.” Humble, however, banned the game shortly after its launch there and has not responded to a request for comment.

None of those stores has near the market share of Steam, but among them, Epic’s has the most name recognition — making its last-minute ban a major blow. 

As with Steam, Epic didn’t explain what in Horses triggered the ban, only referring to the policy on inappropriate and hateful / abusive content and the fact that games rated AO, or Adults Only, could not be distributed on EGS. (Unless it’s an NFT / blockchain game, of course.)

“We immediately appealed their decision through all suggested channels,” the developers’ FAQ reads, adding that when Horses was submitted to the ESRB for rating, it received an Mature rating (ages 17 and up), which is, as of this writing, still prominently displayed on the game’s EGS page. Epic did not respond to a request to clarify the age rating discrepancy or the timing of the ban, referring instead to the statements Santa Ragione shared in its FAQ.

Santa Ragione is very clear about the kind of content Horses contains. The lengthy content warning on the game’s website lists “physical violence, psychological abuse, gory imagery (mutilation, blood), depictions of slavery, physical and psychological torture, domestic abuse, sexual assault, suicide, and misogyny.” It also makes sense that, out of an abundance of caution, Steam would ban the version of the game it saw with the father-and-daughter scene.

“The scene is not sexual in any way, but it is possible that the juxtaposition is what triggered the flag,” Riva told IGN. But what makes less sense is the platform’s refusal to reevaluate the game or at least explain its reasoning. “We believe Steam intentionally keeps its policy opaque so it does not have to stand by clear rules and can adjust decisions to whatever best serves the platform at a given moment,” reads the FAQ.

According to Santa Ragione, Epic’s ban is even more confusing. It said EGS had a more complete version of the game for two months, “with the final achievements-ready build being approved for release 18 days prior to launch.” Epic’s decision to ban Horses reads like decision-makers getting scared in light of all the attention on the game.

In spite of all this, Horses still is available, and the smattering of reviews have been mostly positive. But with large storefronts having significant power over games and studios, the reception may not be enough to keep Santa Ragione alive. The studio says that the combination of the Steam ban and the money it owes investors “puts us in a completely unsustainable financial situation unless the game somehow recoups its development costs.”