An indie studio says it’s at risk of closure after Valve banned its game from Steam

Indie studio Santa Ragione said it was at risk of closing because its latest project would not be available on Steam, which is by far the largest storefront for PC games and a major selling point for many developers. horsesa first-person horror game that mixes gameplay with live-action sequences, and revolves around a college student who spends the summer working on a farm. However, the farm’s “horses” are actually naked adults wearing horse masks. It is clear from the presentation that this is a game for adults.

The studio plans to release horses On the Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch, and Humble Store on December 2. However, Valve’s content review team banned it horses of steam.

“We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time, the developer indicated its release date on Steamworks that they planned to release it a few months later. Based on the content on the Store page, the developer told us that we would need to review the version itself. This sometimes happens if the content on the Store page causes concern that the game itself may not fall within our guidelines,” Valve said. Computer games. “After our team finished the build and content review process, we provided feedback to the developer on why we were unable to ship the game on Steam, in accordance with our onboarding rules and guidelines. Shortly after, the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed this extensively and informed the developer of our final decision that we would not ship the game on Steam.”

Santa Ragioni wrote in an FAQ that she is “committed to producing challenging adult stories. horses He uses grotesque and subversive images to confront power, faith, and violence. We reject subjective obscenity standards and believe this type of moral censorship evokes a dark past in which vague notions of “decency” were used to silence artists. Gaming is an artistic medium and legal adult works should remain accessible to everyone. We respect players enough to deliver the game as intended and let adults choose what they play; “Legal business should not be made out of reach by ambiguous decisions made by a monopolistic storefront.”

This ban in particular predates the recent censorship of adult-oriented games at the request of payment processors. Santa Ragione wanted to create a Steam store page for horses Back in 2023 to help build interest. The studio says Valve wanted to see a playable version of the game before agreeing to a “coming soon” page. The game wasn’t even close to being finished, so Santa Ragioni scrambled to create a playable version of the game with “tons of placeholders.”

According to an email from Valve shared by the developer, it has been banned horses From the storefront on “content that appears, in our opinion, to depict sexual conduct of a minor.” Santa Ragione said Valve did not provide more detailed reasons for rejecting the game. Valve noted that it will not be accepting any more applications horses“Even with modifications.”

The developer claimed to have spent the next two years trying to change Valve’s mind, but the company repeatedly pointed to Steam’s general guidelines and rejected “requests for review and appeals.” However, Santa Ragione has a plausible theory as to why Valve banned the game from Steam. The studio wrote in the FAQ:

All characters in the game are clearly over 20 years old, as evidenced by their appearance and through the dialogue and documentation you will encounter in the game. We believe the ban may have been triggered during the Steam preview through an unfinished scene in Day 6, in which a man and his young daughter visit the farm.

The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in the game the “horses” are humans wearing a horse mask) and they have to choose which one. What followed was an interactive dialogue sequence in which the player led, by lead as if it 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 sparked the flag.

We have since changed the character in the scene to a woman in her twenties, both to avoid juxtaposition and more importantly because the dialogue presented in that scene, which deals with societal structure in a world… horsesworks best when delivered by an older character.

As a result of the Steam ban, Santa Ragione claimed it would be “very difficult” to recover its investment in it horses, Which she claims is “not pornographic”. It spent about $100,000 developing the game.

The studio initially put up $50,000 of its own money horses After signing a deal with the game’s creator, Andrea Loco Burlera. She was hoping to cover these costs through sales of her latest game. Saturnaliabut this did not perform as well as the studio had hoped. horses It was scheduled to be released in a bundle, but that collapsed around the same time Valve rejected the game. Santa Ragione said the Steam ban made it practically impossible to find a publisher or outside partner, so he eventually raised money from friends to complete the game. As such, the studio claimed that it is now “in a completely unsustainable financial position unless the game somehow recovers its development costs.”

Santa Ragioni still plans to support her horses for at least another six months after his release. I set aside money to cover the costs of fixing bugs and adding quality of life changes. But with a ban horses Finding success on non-Steam storefronts, this may be the studio’s last activity.

“I don’t want to make a final decision before I see how the game goes when it launches. But if things go the way I expect, I think… [studio’s closure] This is inevitable, said Pietro Righi Riva, co-founder of Santa Ragioni GamesIndustry.biz. “All the money we will earn will go to the author and to the people who offered money to finish the project. So there will likely not be any money left to create a new project.” [game]…Unless a miracle happens horses He does a very good job.”