Santa Ragione's Horses, the unsettling horror game in which horses are naked human slaves wearing horse masks, won't be released on the Epic Games Store after all. Horses was previously banned from release on Valve Software's Steam platform, too. Publisher Santa Ragione, which released survival horror game Saturnalia in 2022, announced on Monday that Epic Games alerted the company just 24 hours ahead of its release that the game wouldn't be published on Tuesday.
Epic Games told Santa Ragione that Horses violates its content guidelines—"specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies," according to a reprint of the message published on the Horses website. Epic Games communications director Jake Jones confirmed that the platform "found violations of those guidelines during our extensive review," and pointed Aftermath towards the correspondence published on the Horses website. Santa Ragione "immediately" appealed the decision, it said, but that appeal was rejected.
Epic Games specifically said it prohibits content that “contains explicit or frequent depictions of sexual behavior or not appropriately labeled, rated, or age-gated" and "promotes abuse and animal abuse." Santa Ragione denies that Horses includes these things.
Horses is described on its GOG storefront as a "first-person game with live-action sequences." It takes place over the span of fourteen days in-game and will test a player's "obedience, complicity, and restraint" as they play as a college student working on a weird-as-fuck farm. Horses is currently listed on GOG's recent best-selling games page, after only S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat's enhanced edition.
Horses has a pretty lengthy content warning, which certainly provides a better understanding of the sort of imagery in the game:
"This game contains scenes of physical violence, psychological abuse, gory imagery (mutilation, blood), depictions of slavery, physical and psychological torture, domestic abuse, sexual assault, suicide, and misogyny. The inclusion of these elements is intended to depict and characterize a fictional world and its fictional inhabitants. The presence of these elements is not an endorsement of them, nor do they reflect the beliefs or values of the creators. Some scenes also feature unsettling sounds, such as chewing and swallowing, which may be disturbing for players with sound sensitivities or related phobias. Character dialogue also includes references to psychological trauma that may be upsetting, especially for those who may have had similar experiences in their pasts. Player discretion is advised. If you feel uncomfortable or upset while playing, please consider stepping away and reaching out to someone you trust."
The game does still have an Epic Game Store page; several critics reportedly reviewed the game ahead of launch on the platform, including IGN.
Epic Games claimed in its email to Santa Ragione that the game received an Adult's Only (AO) rating from the International Age Rating Coalition. Santa Ragione said that when it filled out the IARC questionnaire, it received a PEGI 18 or ESRB M rating. AO rated games aren't allowed on the Epic Games Store—except games that received that rating for the inclusion of NFTs or blockchain—but mature or 18+ games are. Aftermath has reached out to IARC for clarification on Horses' rating. Santa Ragione said it submitted its certification of its rating to the Epic Games Store ahead of its release.
Epic Games wasn't specific about what caused the ban, and neither was Valve when it originally rejected the game from being published on its platform in 2023. Santa Ragione said in late November that the game was banned in 2023 after the company had to upload an early build of the game—a requirement to getting a Steam storefront page up and running. Valve rejected the build without comment, and Santa Ragione said on its website it was likely due to a scene in which a "young girl" rides on the shoulders of a naked adult woman with a horse head. Santa Ragione said it has since changed all characters in the game to be in their 20s or older.
"Regardless of a developer’s intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor," Valve wrote in an automated review sent to the studio, according to the FAQ on the Horses website.
Santa Ragione said in its FAQ that the Steam ban isn't related to the recent restrictions on adult content that caused a major "deindexing" of NSFW games on Itch.io and the outright removal of others there and on Steam. That's because Valve's rejection of the game happened in 2023, before conservative activist group Collective Shout's campaign to harass game platforms into removing anything it deemed objectionable. The group went after game platforms by harnessing the power of payment processors—with payment processors determining what's acceptable sexual content and what's not, platforms like itch.io and Steam complied or risked having access to the processors removed.
This sort of censorship-by-payment-processor can have a chilling impact on the industry; in an effort to protect children, these restrictions can end up restricting free expression of even mildly-uncomfortable ideas. Horses certainly seems to push up against these restrictions, but its developers said it doesn't cross them: the game is supposed to be "challenging, adult storytelling," the publisher said on its website.
Guidelines for platforms like Steam and the Epic Games Store are often written in such a way that leaves some grey area for certain content—platforms then can apply these restrictions however they'd like, and in ways that often feel confusing to players. Both Epic Games Store and Steam sell sex games and games with graphic violence. For instance, there are a lot of "anime boob games," as Nathan put it in 2016, but not many gay sex games. He spoke to game developer Robert Yang about getting his games on the platform: Dicks can be used for "exploitation or titillation," but not in the context of sex.
"We respect players enough to present the game as intended and to let adults choose what to play; lawful works should not be made unreachable by a monopolistic storefront’s opaque decisions," Santa Ragione said. "Steam publicly downplays human curation in favor of algorithmic sales optimization, yet intervenes with censorship when a game’s artistic vision does not align with what the platform owners considers acceptable art. Steam’s behavior passively shapes which titles developers feel safe creating, pushing preemptive censorship."
