(Image credit: Santa Ragione)
Update: Reached for comment, Valve replied that its content review team "extensively" discussed in 2023 whether to reconsider its refusal to list Horses for sale on Steam, but ultimately held its decision. Valve's full statement reads:
We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time, the developer indicated with their release date in Steamworks that they planned to release a few months later. Based on content in the store page, we told the developer we would need to review the build itself. This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines. 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.
While Valve's statement doesn't provide much additional detail about its decision making, it explains why Santa Ragione was asked to provide a playable build for Horses before its store listing could be approved, which isn't typically required of developers until closer to their application's launch.
Original story follows.
On December 2, Italian game dev studio Santa Ragione will release Horses, a first-person horror adventure telling a story of "the burden of familial trauma and puritan values, the dynamics of totalitarian power, and the ethics of personal responsibility," using what the studio calls "grotesque, subversive imagery" of a ranch where nude human beings in horse masks are treated as animal livestock.
Prerelease demos of Horses have been honored at IndieCade, Day of the Devs, SXSW Sydney showcases, and SFMOMA exhibitions. But while it'll be available for $5 on Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch.io, and the Humble Store for $5, Santa Ragione says the launch of Horses will leave the studio at risk of closing—because in June 2023, after submitting the game for listing on Steam, Santa Ragione received an email from Valve saying Horses was banned from Steam for featuring "content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor."
(Image credit: Santa Ragione)
In a lengthy FAQ page about the Horses launch, Santa Ragione shares the full text of the alleged June 2023 content review email from Steam:
"After review, we will not be able to ship your game Horses on Steam. While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, 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. 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 says it believes Valve's reasoning to be "deliberately vague and unfounded" and insists "there are no scenes or characters in the game that fall within that grey area." While Valve never clarified the specific reasoning for banning Horses, even after the months Santa Ragione said it spent unsuccessfully seeking further detail and appeals, the studio suspects the ban may have been provoked by what it says was an incomplete scene from the game's sixth day, when the ranch is visited by a man and his daughter.
(Image credit: Santa Ragione)
"The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in the game the 'horses' are humans wearing a horse mask) and gets to pick which one," Santa Ragione says in its FAQ. "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."
Santa Ragione maintains that, despite its fraught imagery, the unfinished scene—which has since been changed—was "not sexual in any way," and studio co-founder and director Pietro Righi Riva told PC Gamer that Steam's refusal to ship the game was "completely 100% unexpected."
"We never even considered the possibility of being banned without an opportunity to appeal or resubmit," Riva said, noting that Steam's onboarding documentation and content guidelines—which Valve continually directed the studio to after its refusal—doesn't mention the inability to resubmit or appeal game review decisions.
(Image credit: Santa Ragione)
Asked whether he thought an objection to the unfinished sequence was appropriate, Riva said that while he "doesn't think the scene is sexual in nature," he thinks "it's reasonable to object to the juxtaposition" of a young girl riding the shoulders of a nude, leashed woman.
"It's important to note," he said, "that the daughter model from the initial submission was 100% placeholder from the start." At the time, Santa Ragione had only completed character art for the game's protagonists.
"If they had told us that the inclusion was a problem, I wouldn't have objected and would have immediately complied to requests for changes. All we'd want are clear rules/feedback and a path to compliance," Riva said.
(Image credit: Santa Ragione)
According to Riva, Santa Ragione cut the scene from external demo builds while the studio was "figuring out what to change." Horses development resumed in late 2024, after which Santa Ragione began working on script editing and final character art. "That's when we redesigned that scene with the new character and dialogue," Riva said.
Santa Ragione says that, in the game's full release, "all characters in the game are clearly older than 20 years old, as communicated by their appearance and through dialogue and documents." That includes the daughter in the scene Valve likely objected to, "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."
Santa Ragione's FAQ states that Horses wasn't changed to "get onto other platforms" following Steam's refusal, even as Riva says the studio would have altered the scene at Steam's request. In the case of the Epic Games Store, though, it doesn't seem like the studio would have needed to make changes.
(Image credit: Santa Ragione)
Riva told PC Gamer that Santa Ragione submitted Horses to the Epic store at the same time as its Steam submission, but unlike Steam, the Epic store doesn't require a playable build review. Its content guidelines contain similar broad warnings as Steam's, and according to Riva, Epic's only issues with Horses' listing submission involved visible nudity in its screenshots, which Santa Ragione censored for the store listing. But the sequence in question wouldn't have provoked any concerns from Epic at the time if it wasn't being played.
However, if—as Riva explained—the unfinished Day 6 scene was cut from external builds until late 2024, that might mean it was absent from indie showcases and exhibitions where Horses had been honored.
While Steam doesn't disclose its 'no second chances' policy until it's in effect, it's easy to imagine the rationale: If a game is refused for depictions of child exploitation, it's probably better for everyone if its creators can't repeatedly test that boundary. But it's less easy to say that standard is being evenly applied if it means Horses is banned from the platform while games like Blue Archive, which features eroticized imagery of childlike characters with conveniently ambiguous ages, are being monetized without issue.
(Image credit: Santa Ragione)
In a press release, Santa Ragione says losing access to a platform where more than 75% of PC game sales are made preempted its chances of finding a publisher. While it has set aside funds for six months of post-launch support for Horses, the studio says it will wind down operations after the game's launch, with studio closure likely to follow.
The Horses ban, Santa Ragione says, "has nothing to do with the recent restriction on adult content pushed by payment processors; this decision was solely in the hands of Steam's curatorial team." However, it nonetheless calls the decision an act of "moralizing censorship."
"Games are an artistic medium and lawful works for adults should remain accessible. We respect players enough to present the game as intended and to let adults choose what to play; lawful works should not be made unreachable by a monopolistic storefront's opaque decisions," Santa Ragione said in its press release. "Steam publicly downplays human curation in favor of algorithmic sales optimization, yet intervenes with censorship when a game's artistic vision does not align with what the platform owners considers acceptable art."
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