Late final month, Santa Ragione, the developer behind the indie horror sport Horses, revealed that its title had been banned by Steam in 2023 whereas the sport was nonetheless in improvement. The sport had been set to launch on Epic Video games Store this week, however now Epic has banned Horses as properly.
Santa Ragione shared a lengthy statement on its site, in addition to reproduced messages from Epic that broke the information in regards to the cancellation a day earlier than launch. The dispatch from Epic cites violations of its inappropriate content material coverage and hateful or abusive content material insurance policies. Epic additionally acknowledged that Horses received an Adults Solely ranking, and people video games are excluded from the shop.
In response, Santa Ragione talked about that Epic accredited the sport for launch simply over three weeks in the past, and that the precise ranking for the sport was M for Mature below the ESRB and PEGI 18 in worldwide territories. The studio went on to clarify once more that Horses is just not a sexually charged grownup sport.
“We instantly appealed their resolution by means of all recommended channels, stating clearly that the sport does NOT comprise express or frequent depictions of sexual habits,” reads the assertion from Santa Ragione. “All nudity within the sport is totally censored through pixelation. There may be by no means any seen sexual act involving genitalia and all animations are stylized and unrealistic. Moreover, within the three hours of gameplay contained within the sport, there are solely 4 transient and censored sexual sequences, with two of them taking place primarily off digital camera. And lastly, we defined that the content material introduced doesn’t in any means promote abuse (together with animal abuse). The sport is a robust critique of violence and abuse normally.”
Though Santa Ragione was given a possibility to attraction, the judgment was shortly upheld and now the sport is banned from the 2 greatest PC storefronts… and presumably a 3rd as properly. Horses had been set to be launched on Humble Store, however the itemizing now redirects away from the sport’s web page and it does not look like listed on that web site any longer. GameSpot has reached out to Humble for remark.
Santa Ragione beforehand disclosed that it invested $100,000 within the improvement of Horses, and that it could shut on account of being locked out of Steam. Getting banned from Epic might have made the studio’s scenario much more tough. Regardless, Horses is now out there for $5 on GOG, and Itch.io. And whereas it isn’t an adults-only sport, some elements of it are very disturbing. The horses on the middle of the sport aren’t actually horses in any respect. They’re individuals who have been pressured to put on horse masks and dwell like a horse.