Disturbing horror game Horses banned from Steam, studio faces 'high risk' of closure
Blog Andrew Joseph 26 Nov , 2025 0
Indie horror game Horses is gearing up to launch on the Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch.io and Humble Store on December 2nd. But there's one place it won't be on Steam, because according to the developer, Steam has banned the game, for reasons that remain unclear even after two years of back-and-forth discussions with Valve. According to the developers, it appears that this ban may result in the closure of their entire studio.
We spoke to Pietro Righi Riva of Italian studio Santa Ragione (Saturnalia, Wheels of Aurelia, MirrorMoon EP), who explained their story. According to Riva and a Detailed FAQ According to IGN, Santa Ragione first submitted “Horses” to Steam in 2023, when the game was still in the Very Unfinished status. “We were only halfway through development and cobbled together a version that was playable from start to finish, just to satisfy Steam's request for a playable version to open the 'Coming Soon' page, which we'd never been asked for before,” Riva explained. It was at this stage that Valve rejected the game.
However, Riva went on to say that Valve didn't provide any explanation as to why the game was rejected, nor did the team have any opportunity to change the offending content. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn't get anyone at Valve to work with them to reverse the decision.
“Steam's decision was made without detailed feedback, and the ban notice did not cite any specific scenarios or elements,” Riva said. “For months we repeatedly asked what triggered the ban without receiving a reply. We also offered to change anything deemed inappropriate, without success, especially as the game was still in the early stages of development at the time of submission.”
chasing wild horses
So what triggered the ban? Riva still didn't know. While people might think of Steam Some adult games have been banned recently In response to the payment processor's sudden crackdown, Riva said the ban had been in place long before the conversation and that all content in the game was completely legal. He does have a theory, though. Automated reviews sent by Steam in 2023 include the following link: Getting Started Documentation for Steamand the following sentence: “Regardless of a developer's intentions for their product, we will not distribute content that, in our judgment, depicts sexual conduct involving minors.”
“Horse” does not contain any such content, Riva said. All characters in the game are over 20 years old, “as evident by their appearance and the dialogue and files you encounter in the game.” He also insists the game is not pornographic. According to the studio, it's “about family trauma and the burden of Puritan values, the dynamics of totalitarian power, and the ethics of personal responsibility.” From an FAQ sent to IGN:
While it does contain some sexual elements, it is in no way intended to be arousing. It uses challenging, non-traditional material to encourage discussion. It invites players to examine why something feels the way it does, what impact it has on the characters and systems at work, and their limitations. It's about tension, not erotic content. (Sorry if we got our hopes up for horse porn.)
Riva believes that what triggered the ban was a scene that existed when the game was first submitted to Steam, where a man and his young daughter visited a farm. As the FAQ explains:
The daughter wants to ride a horse (in the game, the “horse” is a human wearing a horse mask) and can then choose which horse. What follows is an interactive dialogue sequence in which the player leads a naked adult woman on a rope like a horse with a young girl on her shoulders. The scene is not sexual in any way, but the juxtaposition may be what triggered the flag. We have since changed the character in the scene to a woman in her twenties, not only to avoid juxtaposition, but more importantly because the dialogue provided in the scene deals with the social structure of the horse world and works better when delivered by an older character.
Riva said he had tried everything. He tried talking to contacts at Valve who had previously worked with the studio on past games. According to him, they claimed not to know the specific reasons for the ban and said it was impossible to find out and tell them. He has contacted Valve again and again, but has yet to receive any official explanation as to what content was offensive, nor an opportunity to resubmit the content without it. IGN also reached out to Valve for comment for this article but did not respond in time for publication.
Riva also said that he had no problems with any other platforms: GOG, Itch.io, and the Humble Store. Epic asked the studio to only update screenshots on the game's store page to avoid nudity, a request Riva said they complied with and the game was accepted. As for consoles, he said he's shown the game to console partners and hasn't heard any concerns about the content. Horses also received the PEGI and ESRB ratings required for console release. “The only reason we haven't actively started porting games is because of a lack of funding.”
control it
To be clear, Maas disturbingly says At least. I saw a colleague play some of this during a demo at Developer Day 2023, and it's not for the faint of heart. It's about a young man who comes to a farm to take a summer job caring for horses, only to discover that the horses are actually naked adults wearing horse head masks, locked in the yard. Clips in the trailer show “horses” watching what appear to be horse-like propaganda, being carried on the shoulders of others and ridden, being fed carrots, and being subjected to humiliation and violence. It challenges players to either accept what they see and continue to engage with it, or to try to subvert what's going on at the racecourse, a process that in some ways seems downright terrifying and unpleasant.
But Santa Ragione also has a strong track record of making and publishing artistic, profound, unsettling games with poignant messages, many of which have won awards for them. Their board game Escape From The Aliens In Outer Space was nominated for a Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming. Since its launch in 2013, “MirrorMoon EP” has been shortlisted for the Independent Games Festival Innovation Award. Most recently, Santa Ragione published Hell of the Mediterranean in 2024, which won the Independent Games Festival Excellence in Narrative Award. Mediterranean Inferno is just one of a handful of games released by Santa Ragione to promote the work of emerging Italian creators, and Horse is another example.
Again from the FAQ:
We are committed to making challenging adult stories. Horse uses grotesque, subversive imagery to confront power, belief and violence. We reject subjective standards of obscenity and believe such moral censorship evokes a dark past where vague notions of “decency” were used to silence artists. Games are an artistic medium, and legitimate works by adults should remain accessible. We respect players enough to present games as intended and let adults choose what to play; legitimate works should not be out of reach due to opaque decisions by monopoly storefronts. Steam has publicly downplayed human curation in favor of algorithmic sales optimization, but censorship occurs when a game's artistic vision doesn't align with what the platform owner deems acceptable art. Steam's actions passively determine which games developers can safely create, thereby promoting preemptive censorship.
However, the verdict still stands. Riva and Santa Ragione were in a bind: a week away from launch and unable to release their game on the largest PC storefront in existence.
long face
According to Riva, the inability to launch on Steam almost certainly means Santa Ragione is doomed. The studio was already in financial trouble: when they signed the game with creator Andrea Lucco Borlera, they initially invested $50,000. They were hoping sales of the team's previous game, Saturnalia, would help recoup that money, but it didn't turn out as well as they had hoped. Riva said they even had a “great bundle opportunity” lined up for Saturnalia, but had to cancel it when Valve again refused to provide them with a Steam key for unknown reasons.
Around the same time, we learned that Horses had been banned and would not be released on Steam, which completely eliminated our ability to find external supporting publishers or partners to fund the rest of the game because no one in the industry thought an indie game that couldn't be released on Steam was viable. After two years of seeking these funds through traditional channels while trying to get the game unblocked, we had to seek private funding from friends to complete development, which put us in a completely unsustainable financial position unless the game somehow recouped its development costs.
Although it seemed hopeless, Riva did not give up on the possibility of saving San Ragione. He said that if the game could sell “tens of thousands” of copies without being on Steam, they would be able to break even and continue working on future projects. But he doesn't count on that. Ideally, he said, Valve would reverse its decision and reconsider the game, but two years later, that doesn't seem likely to happen either.
However, Riva said their team won't disappear from the game entirely. The team has set aside six months of funding to support bug fixes and quality-of-life updates after the release of Horses. Riva also told me that the studio has long known this was possible and has been preparing accordingly. Its members have found other jobs, some of them in games. Riva himself said that while directing Santa Ragione, he has been engaged in various tasks such as teaching, consulting and curating, so he plans to “do more of this”. Horses director Borlera is already promoting new projects elsewhere.
While Riva would like to see a miracle where Horses can recoup costs and save the studio, he said he would actually most like Valve to be transparent about its adult content policies, which have fluctuated over the years and were never really clear. From the FAQ:
In addition to ultra-violent games, Steam also publishes sexually explicit games; some of these listings acknowledge the legal gray area Steam mentioned in the HORSES ban message, stating in the store description that “all characters depicted are over 18 years old,” but non-pornographic titles like HORSES can be banned without context. In contrast, mature productions with similar or stronger themes often appear on mainstream streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, where controversial directors are an acceptable part of the catalog. This double standard shows that Steam doesn't view games as art on a par with movies, and censors when the artistic vision doesn't align with what the platform owner deems acceptable art.
Finally, Riva urges game developers to come together and demand transparency from Steam. “I know developers are understandably afraid of voicing complaints about Steam, but I hope we can collectively demand better conditions that make our work more feasible and free,” he said. “The current situation is that very few players control the distribution of almost all games produced, which should mean that they are responsible not only for the commercial sustainability of the industry, but also for the development of games as an artistic medium.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter at IGN. Have a story tip? Send it to [email protected].