Indie dev Santa Ragione facing closure after Steam ban

Italian indie studio Santa Ragione is on the verge of closure due to an upcoming horror film. Horseswas denied login to Steam.

The studio will launch Horses December 2, 2025 on the Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch.io and Humble Store for $4.99, but will not be able to distribute the game on Steam after platform operator Valve said it contains “themes, images or descriptions” that it will not publish.

Santa Ragione allocated funds to support Horses within six months of launch, but will likely be discontinued thereafter if the game does not recoup its development costs. This scenario seems unlikely “without access to more than 75 percent of the PC gaming market.”

“Steam's refusal left us with no primary way to communicate with PC players, no opportunity to appeal and no clear path to compliance, as detailed in our Frequently Asked Questions“, says the studio's press release.

“Steam has also stopped providing developer keys to indie developers who do not meet undisclosed sales thresholds, limiting third-party sales and retroactively impacting our catalog. In a virtual monopoly environment, such opaque decisions can quickly determine the survival of a small studio.”

Horses is billed as “a mysterious first-person horror adventure that blurs the lines between reality and the darkest corners of your imagination.” The surreal game allows players to mount naked people and ride them around a farm, completing strange and disturbing tasks.

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“Legitimate works should not be inaccessible”

Santa Ragione spoke candidly about the adult themes depicted in the film. Horses (as evidenced by the extensive content warning on Horses website), but stated that he wants to create experiences that challenge players.

“Horses uses grotesque, subversive imagery to confront power, faith and violence. We reject subjective standards of obscenity and believe that this kind of moralizing censorship harks back to a darker past when vague notions of “decency” were used to silence artists. Games are an artistic medium, and legal works for adults should remain accessible,” the studio explained.

“We respect players enough to present the game as intended and allow adults to choose what to play; legitimate works should not be made unavailable due to the opaque decisions of a monopolistic showcase. Steam publicly downplays human curation in favor of algorithmic sales optimization, but intervenes in censorship when a game's artistic vision does not align with what the platform's owners deem acceptable art. “Steam's behavior passively shapes the games developers feel safe in, creating proactive censorship.”

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It is noteworthy that Santa Ragione stated that Horses he was denied login to Steam before payment processors has reportedly begun introducing restrictions on adult content in video game storefronts.. The studio said Valve rejected the game back in 2023, when it was still in a rough and unfinished state, but did not provide a detailed explanation as to why it was blacklisted.

“After verification, we will not be able to release your game. Horses on 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,” reads an automated review text sent by Valve in Santa Ragione in 2023.

“Regardless of a developer's intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that we believe depicts sexual conduct involving minors. While every product submitted is unique, if your product contains such imagery—even in a subtle form that can be defined as a “gray area”—it will be rejected by Steam.”

Santa Ragione said the full explanation did not mention any specific scenes or elements of the game that could possibly be changed, despite the studio offering to change any content deemed unsuitable. It was also stated that Horses has not been changed at the request of other platform holders. “The version that will be released in the near future will be the same as we intended,” the studio confirmed.

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Santa Ragione said the ban was perceived as a “political decision” rather than a legal one, and stressed that Horses There are no characters depicted that could be mistaken for children or minors. The studio believes that Valve, which it said has “informally raised concerns” about some interruptions in the game before Steam's automated review completed, may have flagged the game for an unfinished scene in an early build.

“We believe the ban may have been triggered during Steam's original submission by an unfinished scene on the sixth day in which a man and his young daughter visit a farm. The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in the game, “horses” are people wearing horse masks) and can choose which one,” the studio said.

“This was followed by an interactive dialogue sequence in which the player leads, as if he were a horse, a naked adult woman with a young girl on her shoulders. The scene is not sexual in any way, but it is possible that the juxtaposition is what caused the flag to appear. We have since changed the character in the scene to a twenty-something woman to avoid juxtaposition and, more importantly, because the dialogue presented in the scene, which deals with social structure in the horse world, really works. It’s better when it’s spoken by an older character.”

Of course, this remains speculation on the studio's part, as Valve allegedly failed to explain which elements Horses this was considered inappropriate. For Santa Ragione, this is the crux of the problem.

“We believe that Steam is deliberately keeping its policies opaque so that it does not have to adhere to strict rules and has the opportunity to adjust decisions according to what best suits the platform at the time,” the studio added. “This might be acceptable in a truly competitive market, but Steam is a virtual monopoly, and arbitrary, unpredictable decisions could jeopardize the survival of developers and studios. We also believe that they chose this particularly high-profile and general accusation because it is difficult to dispute publicly.”

“We were treated without the professional respect that the situation demanded.”

Santa Ragione invested approximately $100,000 in development Horsesapproximately half of which was donated by friends of the studio. It now appears that without access to Steam, it will be impossible to recoup this investment, and the company faces the very real risk of closure.

Discussing how the situation has affected the team, Santa Ragione co-founder Pietro Rigi Riva told Game Developer that the last two years have been “deeply disappointing.”

“My team and I were extremely upset, knowing not only that we had done everything possible to overturn this decision, but also that we had offered to comply with any request or ruling, and yet we were treated without the professional respect that the situation demanded,” he said.

“It's scary, humiliating and patronizing to hear 'no, just because' from organizations that have absolute power over your financial stability. I think I personally feel what we described in the press release when we say that this approach encourages authors to self-censor. Not having clear boundaries about what I am allowed to create and publish is oppressive and the opposite of an environment that promotes and encourages creativity.”

Riva added that he feels “deceived and betrayed” by Valve, which he said received a significant portion of Santa Ragione's revenue during its 14 years of doing business on Steam.

“I mistakenly believed that this gave us a certain level of professional courtesy that would allow us to resolve any problem. This belief gave me a false sense of security, a feeling that the publication process was at least somewhat predictable. It is difficult not to see malice when the rules are deliberately left unclear, while at the same time there is an insistence that their curation is automatic and 'democratic' because people are excluded from the process,” he continued.

“I [also] I feel really bad for the author Andrea Lucco Borler because he obviously has the deepest emotional connection to the work. I was really worried about it when I first had to break the news that the game wouldn't be coming to Steam. Imagine being told that the work you spent years of your life on will not be published for no reason and there is nothing you can do.”

Riva said the entire team was under “tremendous stress” after repeatedly trying but failing to appeal the ban. He's also concerned that openly criticizing Valve could put the development team in the line of fire.

“I think it's very important for us to have this conversation, but I know it opens the team up to additional scrutiny and criticism, both in general for openly criticizing Valve, and specifically because the Steam allegations are so broad and serious. This is something that literally kept me up at night on many occasions,” he continued.

“In the end, I think [the team is] I'm glad we were able to complete and release the game. If we had canceled it when we were banned, it would have been much worse. Of course, everyone is sad that this will most likely be our last game together as Santa Ragione, but at least there is some consolation in the fact that it will be such a strange and, hopefully, memorable game.”

The game developer has reached out to Valve for comment.