Developer Santa Ragione claims it could close after Valve blocked game from Steam

Italian developer Santa Ragione has claimed that it could face closure after Valve said it would not host its upcoming horror title Horses on Steam.

The studio says that this decision has meant it is unable to reach the biggest audience for PC and thus is unlikely to recoup the project’s development costs. At the moment, Santa Ragione has set aside money to support Horses for six months post-launch, but after that the money runs dry.

In an exclusive interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Santa Ragione co-founder Pietro Righi Riva said: “All the money we’ll earn is gonna go to the author and to the people who have offered money to finish the project. So there will likely be no money left to make a new [game]… Unless a miracle happens and Horses does very well.”

Horror title Horses was announced back in June 2023, although days prior to its reveal, Valve said that it would not ship the game on Steam; Santa Ragione claims that it has been given no recourse or opportunity to appeal the decision.

“After review, we will not be able to ship your game Horses on Steam,” Valve wrote in an automated message to Santa Ragione, posted in a list of FAQs about the situation on the Horses website.

“While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, we found that this title features themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won’t distribute. 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. While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation – even in a subtle way that could be defined as a ‘grey area’ – it will be rejected by Steam. For instance, setting your game in a high school but declaring your characters are of legal age would fall into that category and be banned. This app has been banned and cannot be reused. Re-submissions of this app, even with modifications, will not be accepted.”

Horses is a short horror experience where players take on the role of a summer hand on a rural farm; they are set “increasingly surreal, unsettling tasks”. In the FAQs, Santa Ragione speculates that a particular scene where a man and his young daughter visit the farm could have triggered Valve’s response:

“The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in the game the ‘horses’ are humans wearing a horse mask) and gets to pick which one. What followed was an interactive dialogue sequence where the player is leading, by a lead as if they 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 triggered the flag.

“We have since changed the character in the scene to be a twenty-something woman, both to avoid the juxtaposition and more importantly because the dialogue delivered in that scene, which deals with the societal structure in the world of Horses, works much better when delivered by an older character.”

Despite not launching on Steam, Horses is coming to the Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch.io and Humble.

“Santa Ragione is deeply grateful to the players who supported us over the past 15 years, and we encourage them to keep supporting experimental work, which is increasingly threatened by current market dynamics,” said the studio in a press release. “We are also grateful to all other distribution platforms for fostering a landscape that protects experimental and cultural work, and for welcoming Horses.”

Earlier this year, Steam removed hundred of games as part of a crackdown on adult content, following pressure from payment providers. The UK trade industry body UKIE responded shortly afterwards, saying: “We believe payment providers and platforms alike should have confidence in trusted age rating systems and the enforcement mechanisms behind them.”

GamesIndustry.biz has reached out to Valve for comment on this story.