Valve tries to explain why the game was banned from Steam before release

renew: Valve has now commented on the unusual situation, saying it's asking to play Horses in 2023 due to “content on the store page.” This led to it sharing feedback and subsequently deciding to block the game from being released on Steam.

In a statement shared with game developerValve explained that the steps to play the game are not unprecedented. “This sometimes happens when content on the store page raises concerns that the game itself may not comply with our guidelines,” a spokesperson said. “After our team completed the build and reviewed the content, we provided feedback to the developer on why we were unable to release the game on Steam, which was in compliance with our onboarding rules and guidelines. Shortly after, the developer asked us to reconsider the review, which was discussed extensively with our internal content review team and communicated to the developer our final decision that we did not plan to release the game on Steam.”

There was no further explanation as to why this was the case, and whether the developers had indeed made adjustments as requested by Valve. The original story is as follows.

Earlier this year, Valve changed the rules Prevent adult games from being preemptively released on steam. This comes in the wake of a wider pushback against adult gaming. steam and itchioprimarily at the request of banks and payment processors. The upcoming indie horror game Horses is rated M (Mature), but it's not an adult game. Regardless, Steam informed developer Santa Ragione that Horses has been banned from the platform in 2023. The developers claim that in the two years since the ruling, Valve has never explained the reasons for the ban.

Horses is a first-person game in which the player takes on the role of a ranch hand who spends two weeks on an increasingly bizarre and disturbing farm. The horses in this game are not horses at all. They are naked humans wearing horse masks, forced to behave like beasts of burden.

Sanragione insisted that Horses was not pornography, and the publishers jokingly added that they would apologize if it “made you hope for horse pornography.” Instead, Santa Ragione says it uses “challenging, unconventional material to encourage discussion. It invites players to examine why something feels the way it does, what it says about the characters and systems at work, and what their limitations are. It's about tension, not erotic content.”

According to the publisher, Valve has never provided any guidance on what content it deems objectionable or what content could be changed to avoid a ban. Santa Ragione did agree that the ban may have been triggered by a scene in the game that initially featured a young girl riding on the shoulders of a naked adult woman wearing a horse mask. However, the publisher added that the scene had the girl replaced with “a woman in her twenties” because using an older character would have better conveyed the scene's dialogue and dynamics.

Santa Ragione admitted that the studio could be at risk of shutting down if it wasn't released on Steam. To recoup at least some of the $100,000 in development costs, Horses will epic games store, humble shop, GOGand itchio Releases December 4th for $5.