Valve has responded to the controversy surrounding its decision to ban the indie horror game Horses from Steam, providing additional details on its 2023 review process. The Italian studio Santa Ragione, facing potential closure, announced the game's release on other platforms despite the rejection. Horses explores themes of trauma and power through a unique premise involving human 'horses' as livestock.
Background on Horses
Horses is a three-hour first-person horror adventure developed by Italian studio Santa Ragione in collaboration with director Andrea Lucco Borlera. The game follows a rural farmhand over 14 days in a summer setting, delving into themes of familial trauma, puritan values, totalitarian power, and personal responsibility. It features monochrome visuals, live-action intermissions, and interactive sequences, with a premise where naked humans serve as 'horses' kept as livestock. Santa Ragione emphasizes that the game is not pornographic and does not intend to arouse, with all characters explicitly aged 20 or older.
The Ban Controversy
In 2023, Valve requested to review an early, incomplete build of Horses after concerns arose from the game's Steam store page. The automated rejection message stated that Steam would not distribute content appearing to depict 'sexual conduct involving a minor.' Santa Ragione suspects this stemmed from a non-sexual scene where a visitor's young daughter rode on the shoulders of a female 'horse' during an interactive dialogue. The studio revised the scene, aging the daughter to a 20-something adult to better fit the narrative on societal structures, but Valve declined to re-review the final build.
The game has since been approved for distribution on Epic Games Store, GOG, Humble Store, and Itch.io, where it will launch on December 2 for €4.99/$4.99. Santa Ragione's previous titles include Saturnalia, Mediterranea Inferno, and Mirror Moon EP.
Valve's Response
Valve provided the following statement: '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.'
Santa Ragione has expressed frustration over Valve's lack of transparency and refusal to reassess, noting the ban's severe impact on the studio's future.