The indie studio says it is in danger of being shut down after Valve banned its game from Steam

Indie Studio Santa Ragione said it is in danger of shutting down as its latest project will not be available on Steam, which is the main storefront for PC games and a key selling point for many developers. Horsesa first-person action game that combines the gameplay and action sequences, it’s about a college student who spends the summer working on a farm. However, the farm’s “horses” are actually naked adults wearing horse masks. It’s pretty clear from the trailer that this is a game about grappleups.

The studio plans to release Horses In the Epic Games Store, GoG, itch and the humble store on December 2. However, Valve’s content review team has been banned Horses from steam.

“We updated the game back in 2023. At that time, the developers were shown their release date in store activities, we happened with content in the store that we will need to release a few months later. PC Gamer. “After our team played the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why it was threatened by your developer discussing this, and it was discussed with the developer that our final decision was not to submit this game to Steam.”

Santa Ragione wrote in the FAQ that he is “committed to producing a challenge, telling old stories. Horses It uses grotesque, divisive imagery to deal with power, faith and violence. We have rejected the levels of horrendous disgust and believe that this kind of enthusiastic research evokes the dark past when the abstract ideas of ‘HestEncy’ are used. Games are artistic activities and formal activities for adults should always be accessible. We respect players enough to present the game as intended and allow adults to choose what to play; Legitimate jobs should not be made inaccessible by opaque monopolistic decisions. “

This specific restriction precedes the recent study of adult-oriented games in the display of payment processors. Santa Ragione wanted to create a Steam store page Horses Back in 2023 to help build fertility. The studio says that Valve wanted to see the design of the game before agreeing to the next page. The game was close to completion, so Santa Ragione set out to put together a playable version of the game with tons. “

According to the email from valve that the developer was shared, it was blocked Horses From the storefront “content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual behavior involving a minor.” Santa Ragione said Valve did not provide more detailed reasons for rejecting the game. The valve noted that it will not accept arrows other than Horses“Or by conversion.”

The developer said that he spent the next two years trying to change the mind of the valve, but the company has repeatedly spoken in the general guidelines of the dictionary and rejected “requests for its revision.” Santa Ragione has a clear idea as to why Valve banned the game from Steam, however. The studio wrote in the FAQ that:

All the characters in this game are older than 20 years old, as it is conveyed by their appearance and through the dialogues and texts that you will encounter in this game. We think that the prohibition may have been invented during the first transmission of the stage with an incomplete incident on the sixth day, when a man and his young daughter visited the farm.

The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in this game the ‘horses’ are people wearing horse masks) and she finds out which one. Next was an active dialogue sequence in which the player leads, by leading as if he were a horse, a large naked woman with a small girl on her shoulders. The scene isn’t sexual in any way, but it’s probably the juxtaposition that made it flag.

We have since changed the character in the scene to a certain woman, both to avoid juxtaposition and more importantly because the dialogue is brought to that scene, which is about the social structure in the world Horsesit works best when delivered by an older character.

As a result of Steam’s ban, Santa Ragione claimed it would be “very difficult” to recover its money Horses, which is, “not pornographic”. It spent about $100,000 on the development of the game.

The studio initially put up $50,000 of its own money Horses After signing an agreement with the Creator of the game, Andrea Lucco Borlera. Hoping to cover those costs through sales of its final game, Saturnaliabut that wasn’t done nearly as well as the studio. Horses he slipped to be included in the pile, but that fell almost at the same time as the valve turned down the game. Santa Ragione said that Steam Ban Benza was unable to find a publisher or an external partner, so in the end he raised money from friends to complete the game. As it stands, the studio said it is now “in an untenable financial position unless the game somehow recovers its development costs.”

Santa Ragione still plans to support Horses at least another six months after release. Set aside money to cover the cost of fixing bugs and adding quality-of-life changes. But to block Horses Finding success on non-Steam Storefronts, that would be the Studio’s last mission.

“I don’t want to make a final decision before seeing how the game performs at launch. But if things go the way I expect them to go, then I think [studio’s closure] it is inevitable,” Santa Ragione Counder Pietro Righi Riva told TApIkukutultry.biz. “All the money we will get will go to Mlobi and the people who have donated money to finish this project. So there will probably not be any money left to do something new [game]… Unless another miracle happens Horses do very well. “