Horses is an upcoming narrative-driven horror game you’ve probably never heard of set to launch next month on the Epic Games Store, Humble Store, GOG, and Itch.io. But you won’t be able to find the creepy indie title on Steam, and the Italian studio behind Horses claims it doesn’t know why Valve is blocking the game from its PC storefront.
On November 25, indie studio Santa Ragione published a trailer for Horses that revealed the game’s December 2 release date. However, it also sports an interesting badge at the end claiming the game has been banned from Steam. At the same time the trailer went live, the studio updated its website to include a lengthy FAQ about Horses being banned from Steam. It claims Valve has provided little clarity on what’s going on and that the whole situation could result in developer Santa Ragione, which made 2023’s excellent Saturnalia, shutting down entirely.
Speaking with IGN, co-founder Pietro Righi Riva explained that in 2023, the studio submitted a request for a Steam Coming Soon page for Horses. However, Valve told the company to submit a playable build. “We were only about halfway through development and had scrambled together a build that could be played start to finish, solely to satisfy Steam’s request for a playable version to open a Coming Soon page, something we had never been asked for before,” Riva said. According to the studio, this is when Valve rejected Horses from being sold on Steam.
But Santa Ragione was not told why Horses had been banned from Steam. The company’s FAQ claims Steam told the studio that Horses had been barred from the storefront because it found that it featured “themes, imagery, or descriptions that [Steam] won’t distribute.” The message also included a line that Valve won’t distribute games that contain content depicting “sexual conduct involving a minor” regardless of intention or if it is done in a “subtle way that could be defined as a ‘grey area.’”
The studio called this explanation “deliberately vague and unfounded” and claimed that Horses does not contain any content that would fall into this so-called “grey area.” However, it did admit that initially a scenario in the game did involve a young kid riding on the shoulders of a naked woman in a mask, as horses in the game are depicted as naked people, but that scene has since been changed to remove the child.
“Steam’s decision came without detailed feedback, and the ban notice did not cite any specific scenes or elements,” Riva told IGN. “For months, we repeatedly asked what triggered the ban and received no answer. We also offered, unsuccessfully, to change any content deemed unfit, especially since the game was still early in development at the time of submission.”
Kotaku contacted Valve, but didn’t hear back before publication.
According to Santa Ragione, this ban has nothing to do with the ongoing and recent issues involving alleged pornographic games being removed from Steam due to bad-faith actors pressuring credit card companies and payment processors.
Santa Ragione claims that Horses not being able to launch on Steam could make it very difficult for the company to recoup development costs, and the studio admits that it might shut down in the near future. The developer has set aside funds to support Horses for around six months after launch, but beyond that, it is unsure of what the future holds, as being banned from Steam will keep Horses away from “more than 75 percent of the PC gaming market.”
Horses launches on basically every other PC gaming storefront besides Steam on December 4. It will cost $5.
