Indie studio Santa Ragione said it is at risk of closure because its latest project will no longer be available on Steam, by far the largest storefront for PC games and a major point of sale for many developers. horsesA first-person horror game that blends gameplay and live-action visuals, about a college student who works on a farm over the summer. However, the farm’s “horses” are actually naked human adults wearing horse masks. It is clear from the trailer that this is a game for adults.
The studio is planning to release horses On December 2nd on the Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch, and Humble Store. However, Valve’s content review team blocked horses By steam.
“We reviewed the game in 2023. At that time, the developer had indicated in Steamworks with its release date that they planned to release a few months later. Based on the content in the Store page, we told the developer that we would need to review the build. This sometimes happens if the content on the Store page causes concern that the game itself may not fall within our guidelines,” Valve explained. pc gamer, “After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines, we provided feedback to the developer as to why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam. After a while the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed it extensively and communicated our final decision to the developer that we were not going to ship the game on Steam.”
Santa Ragione wrote in the FAQ that it is “committed to challenging, adult storytelling. horses Uses queer, subversive imagery to confront power, faith, and violence. We reject subjective obscenity standards and believe that such moral censorship exposes a dark past in which vague notions of ‘decency’ were used to silence artists. Games are an artistic medium and legitimate work should remain accessible to adults. We respect players enough to present the game the way they want and let adults choose what they want to play; “Legitimate actions should not be rendered inaccessible by the opaque decisions of monopolistic storefronts.”
This particular ban predates recent censorship of adult-oriented games at the behest of payment processors. Santa Ragione wanted to create a Steam Store page horses Back in 2023 to help generate interest. The studio says that Valve wanted to see a playable build of the game before approving the Coming Soon page. The game was nowhere close to being finished, so Santa Ragione struggled to create a playable version of the game with “lots of placeholders”.
According to an email from Valve shared by the developer, it led to the ban horses From the storefront “In our opinion, material that appears to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.” Santa Ragione said that Valve did not give more detailed reasons for rejecting the game. Valve noted that it would not accept further submissions. horses“Even with modifications.”
The developer claimed that it spent the next two years trying to change Valve’s mind, but the company repeatedly pointed it to Steam’s general guidelines and rejected its “request for review and appeal”. However, Santa Ragione has a plausible theory as to why Valve blocked the game from Steam. The studio wrote in the FAQ that:
All of the characters in the game are clearly over the age of 20, as evidenced by their appearance and the dialogue and documents you encounter in the game. We believe the ban may have been triggered by an incomplete scene during the initial Steam submission of The Sixth Day, in which a man and his young daughter visit a farm.
The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (the ‘horses’ in the game are humans wearing horse masks) and she has to choose which horse. This was followed by an interactive dialogue sequence where the player was leading, 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 confrontation led to the flag being hoisted.
We have since changed the character in the scene to a twenty-year-old woman, both to avoid the conflicting situation and, more importantly, to make the dialogue in the scene relate to the social structure in the world. horsesIt works much better when presented by an older character.
As a result of the Steam ban, Santa Ragione claimed it would be “very difficult” to recoup its investment. horses, Which claims it is “not porn”. It spent approximately $100,000 on the development of the game.
The studio initially invested $50,000 of its own. horses After signing a deal with the game’s creator, Andrea Lucco Borlera. She hoped to recoup those costs from sales of her last game, celebration of joyBut it did not perform as well as the studio had hoped. horses It was supposed to be released in a bundle, but this fell apart around the same time when Valve rejected the game. Santa Ragione said that Steam restrictions made it practically impossible for him to find an outside publisher or partner, so he eventually raised money from friends to complete the game. As such, the studio claimed that it is now “in a completely untenable financial position unless the game somehow recoups its development costs.”
Santa Ragione still plans to support horses For at least six months after release. It has set aside funds to cover the costs of fixing bugs and making quality of life changes. but forbidden horses Finding success on non-Steam storefronts, this may be the studio’s last move.
“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, I think [studio’s closure] is inevitable,” said Pietro Righi Riva, co-founder of Santa Ragione. gamesindustry.biz“Any money we make will go to the author and those who have offered money to complete the project, So there will likely be no money left to make new [game]…unless a miracle happens and horses Does very well.”
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