Saturnalia and Wheels of Aurelia developer Santa Ragione have announced that they are “winding down operations and face a high risk of studio closure” after Valve refused to allow the release of their upcoming horror game. Horses on Steam, the largest digital computer game store by some distance. They say they have the funds to support and update Horses post-launch for about six months, but state that they “will not be able to launch new projects unless Horses somehow recoups its development costs without having access to over 75% of the PC gaming market.”
The studio published FAQ on their official website explaining the situation in detail. They claim that Valve rejected Project Horses based on an unfinished 2023 build, after which Steam's approval teams commented that “this title contains themes, images, or descriptions that we will not distribute,” with the specific addition that “we will not distribute content that we believe depicts sexual conduct involving minors.”
We'll come back to that last line. First, some context. Horses, if you haven't had any displeasure yet, an unholy cauldron of surreal body horror and silent film techniquewhich will be released on December 2nd via Epic, GOG, Humble Store and Itch. In it, you play a young man who must spend two weeks working on an isolated farm. After meeting the Farmer – a lumpen gargoyle whose lips and teeth take up too much screen time – you are introduced to the main Horses, who turn out to be naked human slaves in horse masks, their private parts blurred.
About two years ago, Santa Ragione submitted a “rough, incomplete” version of Horses to Steam for approval. “We were only halfway through development and put together a build that was playable from 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 to do before,” the developers comment.
Santa Ragione states that in June 2023 they received an “automatic” review statement from Valve rejecting the game on the grounds that it violated Steam's content policies. You will find the full text below.
After verification, we will not be able to submit your HORSES game to Steam. While we strive to deliver the majority of games submitted to us, we have discovered that this game contains themes, images or descriptions that we will not distribute. Regardless of the product developer's intentions, we will not distribute content that we believe depicts sexual conduct involving minors. While every product submission is unique, if your product has such a representation (even in an implicit way, which can be defined as a “gray area”), it will be rejected by Steam. For example, the game takes place in a high school, but announces that your characters are of age. This will fall into this category and will be prohibited. This app is locked and cannot be used again. Resubmissions of this application, even with changes, will not be accepted.
The developers spent the following months asking for more details about the ban, while proposing changes to anything that Valve deemed unsuitable for publication – which would have been relatively easy, given that horses were still being created on Steam at the time the review was submitted. They say Valve has yet to respond, but believe Steam content reviewers may have had concerns about one particular scene where another man and his daughter visit a farm.
“The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in the game, “horses” are people wearing horse masks) and must choose which one,” the developers explain. “This was followed by interactive dialogue in which the player leads, like a horse, a naked adult woman with a young girl on her shoulders.
“This scene is in no way sexual, but it is possible that this juxtaposition is what inspired the flag,” they continue. “We've since changed the character in that scene to a twenty-something woman to avoid contrast and, more importantly, because the dialogue in that scene, which deals with social structure in the HORSE world, works much better if it's delivered by an older character.”
The developers note that all the characters in the game “are clearly over 20 years old, as evidenced by their appearance, as well as the dialogue and documents you encounter in the game.” They also note that while Horses “does contain some sexual elements, the intent is not to titillate. It uses challenging, unconventional materials to stimulate discussion.” Valve has, of course, already rejected the intent argument in its supposed statement above.
I've now played Horses myself – stay tuned for a review next week – and as for the final game, at least nothing in the scene with the young woman strikes me as some kind of child pornography. It's disturbing material, but at the same time it's clearly a commentary on abuse and exploitation rather than an endorsement, with appropriate dialogue, and yes, the characters are depicted as adults (the young man protagonist is described elsewhere as 19 or 20 years old in a letter from his parents). However, it's unclear whether this particular scene drew Valve's ire. We sent them a letter asking for comment on Santa Ragione's statements.
Santa Ragione says they have invested about $100,000 into producing the horses. The developers initially invested $50,000 after signing the game to its main developer Andrea Lucco Borlera and hoped to cover the remaining costs through sales of their previous, very good horror game Saturnalia. The latter, however, did not sell as well as hoped, which Santa Ragione partially attributes to Valve's refusal to provide them with Steam keys for a “great bundle opportunity” – this happened around the time they were told that Horses had been banned from Steam.
Santa Ragione states that the ban “completely eliminated our ability to find an external supporting publisher or partner to fund the rest of the game, as no one in the industry considers an indie game viable that cannot be released on Steam.” They raised the remaining $50,000 through private funding from friends, “which puts us in a completely precarious financial position if the game somehow doesn't recoup its development costs.”
Santa Ragione may deserve some criticism on this last point: if you know your video game project isn't “viable,” isn't it more responsible to hedge your bets than to continue fundraising? That said, I otherwise sympathize with the developers' predicament.
Given that the horse ban was introduced in 2023, it comes earlier than the recent ban. a number of exceptions from the list of “adult” games on Steam and Itch.io, contributed by repression of the payment system. In his frequently asked questions, Santa Ragione is careful to draw a line between the situation and broader efforts to limit access to sexually explicit material online.
“It is important to note that the HORSES ban has nothing to do with recent restrictions on adult content introduced by payment processors,” they write. “This decision was solely in the hands of the Steam curation team.” In other words, they place the blame for all of this squarely on Valve.
“In addition to ultra-violent games, Steam distributes explicit pornographic games,” the developers comment. “[S]Some of these listings acknowledge the legal gray area Steam mentioned in the HORSES ban post by stating that “All characters depicted are over 18 years of age” in their store descriptions, however non-pornographic works such as HORSES may be banned without context.
“In contrast, mature works with comparable or stronger themes regularly appear on major streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, where controversial directors are an accepted part of the catalogue,” the developers continue. “This double standard suggests that Steam does not view games as art on par with films, and intervenes through censorship when artistic vision does not align with what the platform owner deems acceptable art.”
We will again ask Valve for comment.
Update: And here it is. Valve shared a statement with RPS and other publications about how Horses was banned from Steam. This doesn't really add to Santa Ragione's account of events or provide any insight into why the game was rejected, but it does suggest that the developers were planning to release Horses well before December of this year, which could be considered contradictory to Santa Ragione's comment about submitting a “rough, incomplete” build “halfway through development” to the platform owner for review in 2023. However, I am looking at the tea leaves there. Here is the statement in full.
We reviewed the game back in 2023. The developer then indicated a release date on Steamworks that they planned to release it in a few months. Based on the contents of the store page, we told the developer that we would need to review the build itself. Sometimes this happens if the content on the store page raises concerns that the game itself may not meet our guidelines. After our team tested the build and reviewed the content, we informed the developer why we could not release the game on Steam, in accordance with our registration rules and guidelines. Some time later, the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed this in detail and informed the developer of our final decision that we were not going to release the game on Steam.
