Epic Games Store decides “at the last minute” not to distribute Horses

Epic Games Store is the latest online storefront to withdraw support for the provocative indie game, Horses.

In a statement posted to social media, developer Santa Ragione confirmed Epic Games Store decided “at the last minute not to distribute the game,” despite “having previously approved a release build.”

Last week, Italian developer Santa Ragione claimed in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz 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.

In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz at the time, Valve said: “We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time, the developer indicated with their release date in Steamworks that they planned to release a few months later. Based on content in the store page, we told the developer we would need to review the build itself. This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines.

“After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines. A short while later, the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed that extensively and communicated to the developer our final decision that we were not going to ship the game on Steam.”

Now it seems Epic Games Store has followed suit, telling Santa Ragione:

“We are unable to distribute Horses on the Epic Games Store because our review found violations of the Epic Games Store Content Guidelines, specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies. The ‘Inappropriate Content’ policy prohibits content which “contains explicit or frequent depictions of sexual behavior or not appropriately labeled, rated, or age-gated.” The ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policy prohibits content that promotes abuse and animal abuse. This content is prohibited by our Guidelines and cannot be distributed on the Epic Games Store.

“Additionally, when we [Epic] filled out the IARC Questionnaire based on the content that we reviewed, it received an Adult Only (AO) rating. Products with AO ratings cannot be distributed on the Epic Games Store (the only exception is for products in cases where an AO rating was applied solely due to the usage of blockchain or NFT technology).”

Santa Ragione was then offered the chance to either modify the game and resubmit it for review, or appeal the decision.

The developer said it “immediately appealed their decision through all suggested channels” and disputed claims that the game contains explicit or frequent depictions of sexual behavior, and “importantly reminded Epic that we filled out and completed IARC as part of their submission process more than five weeks before release and did NOT receive an AO rating.”

“We received a PEGI 18 and an ESRB M rating, as currently displayed on the Horses, coming soon page on the Epic Games Store,” the developer added.

Despite appealing, EGS said it had reviewed the appeal “and found the original decision was appropriately applied and will remain in place.”

CD Projekt’s GOG platform has come out in support of Horses.