Developer Horses Santa Ragione is still “very likely” done making games, despite an increase in sales that appears to be due to recent advertising and community support.
Despite being banned on Steam and just a few days before launch, Epic Games The store too Horses was released on Humble and GOG to generally positive reviews on December 2 and topped the GOG bestseller charts. against all odds. Santa Ragione founder and Horses producer Pietro Rigi Riva said the game's recent virality did help sales, but not enough to take the studio “out of the woods.” and now he goes even further, once again confirming what he said before the launch: Horses is almost certainly the studio's last game.
“The reaction, the attention, the support, and the public participation in supporting and preserving and helping the studio made a huge, huge difference compared to releasing the game exclusively outside of Steam and without any public outcry or any public discussion around the game,” Riva says. Polygon.
Riva estimates Horses will sell around 10,000 units in its first week, which he says is “great” but still not enough to repay the investors who funded the game after it was banned from Steam. Ultimately, Riva says, “it looks like we'll be able to make that money back,” but unfortunately, the prospect of enough profits to fund another game is much less optimistic.
“The sales trajectory that we're seeing now, as we discussed earlier, looks like we'll be able to pay back the people who lent us money and pay off the debt,” Riva says.
“But it's unlikely to give us enough money to actually create anything new at this stage – because, keep in mind, we had to stop development halfway through the game due to this whole situation. And at the same time, Valve won't give us Steam keys for Saturnalia meant we couldn't sell it in bulk to generate the cash flow we needed to launch new projects.”
It's not over yet for Santa Ragione, as Riva says there's still a chance an investor will come along and fund the studio's next project, but as it stands, it seems like closure is the most likely outcome, and that sucks, because even if it's not to everyone's taste, we need more weird, statement-making horror games, not less.
Here best horror games play right now.
