Banned horror game Horses is on Epic Games Store but not Steam

A controversial Italian horror game has been banned from Steam over explicit content, prompting a wider discussion about censorship on Valve’s storefront.

There have been many cases of video games being banned in certain countries over explicit content, like when Manhunt 2 was temporarily banned in the UK, but there have been less (at least, well known) examples of titles being barred from digital storefronts.

That is exactly what’s happened with Horses, an indie horror game from Italian developer Santa Ragione. The studio, known for horror titles such as Mediterranea Inferno and Saturnalia, announced its next game will launch on December 2 via a new trailer, but only on Epic Games Store, Humble Store, GOG, and Itch.io.

As pointed out in the trailer, Horses has been banned from Steam – by far the most popular PC storefront in the world. As such, while the game is coming out across other platforms, the developers are concerned they won’t be able to recoup the title’s development costs and they might have to shutdown.

Horses is a first person horror adventure with live action sequences, which, according to the developers, ‘blurs the line between reality and the darkest corners of your imagination’. It’s set on a horse farm and over the span of 14 days, players are tasked with encounters that ‘test your obedience, complicity, and restraint’.

As shown in the trailer, these encounters include a lot of naked people in horse masks. It’s all very unsettling, and as noted on an FAQ page, Santa Ragione has been in a tussle with Steam over trying to get it authorised.

Despite what you might expect, the banning of Horses from Steam isn’t related to the platform’s recent crackdown on adult content. The game was rejected by Valve in June 2023, when it was around halfway through development, on the very vague grounds that the title featured ‘themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won’t distribute’.

In this same notice, Valve said that it would not ‘distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor’, regardless of the developer’s intentions.

‘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.

‘For instance, setting your game in a high school but declaring your characters are of legal age would fall into that category and be banned. This app has been banned and cannot be reused. Re-submissions of this app, even with modifications, will not be accepted.’

Santa Ragione has described this explanation as ‘deliberately vague and unfounded’, claiming no scenes or characters in the game fall within that grey area.

Horses was refused by Steam when it was in a ‘rough, incomplete state’ according to the team, and the reason they submitted a version so early was to ‘satisfy Steam’s request for a playable version to open a Coming Soon page’ – something they had never been asked before.

‘We told Steam we would change or cut any content they considered problematic if they could point to it, but they would not,’ Santa Ragione added. ‘The version releasing soon is the game as we intended.’

In a statement to PC Gamer, Valve claimed the studio had indicated that, back in 2023, they had planned to release Horses a ‘few months later’ – hence why they asked the studio to review an early build. ‘This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines,’ the company said.

‘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.’

While Steam didn’t give any detailed feedback on what caused the ban, the developer speculates it may have been caused by an ‘incomplete scene’ which has since been altered.

In the original scene, as outlined by the developers, a man and his young daughter visit the farm, and the latter wants to ride one of the horses (which are human beings wearing horse masks).

‘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,’ they wrote. ‘The scene is not sexual in any way, but it is possible that the juxtaposition is what triggered the flag.

‘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.’

In light of Steam’s decision in 2023, Santa Ragione had to seek ‘private funding from friends’ to support the completion of Horses, as without Valve’s approval, an indie game is not seen as ‘viable’ by external publishers. The studio has invested around $100,000 (£75,000) on the game, with ‘roughly half’ being raised by friends.

The studio has described their current financial situation as ‘completely unsustainable’, adding: ‘Without access to Steam, recouping that investment will be very difficult, but the game deserves a chance regardless.’

It’s unclear if Valve will overturn the decision in light of the publicity around the ban, but based on their recent statement, it sounds like they’re sticking with their verdict. GameCentral has reached out to Valve for comment.

Earlier this year, Steam rolled out new guidelines to stop certain kinds of adult-only games from being published on the store, in response to new rules by payment processors.

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