According to IGN, Italian indie studio Santa Ragione is facing potential closure after Steam banned their upcoming horror game Horses without explanation. The studio first submitted the game in 2023 when it was only halfway through development, specifically to create a Coming Soon page as requested by Valve. Despite two years of back-and-forth, Steam never provided specific reasons for the ban or allowed the team to modify any potentially problematic content. Developer Pietro Righi Riva says the studio invested $50,000 initially and now faces “high risk” of shutting down completely without Steam’s massive audience. The game launches December 2 on Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch.io, and Humble Store instead. Riva believes if they can sell “tens of thousands of copies” without Steam, they might break even and survive.
The mystery behind the ban
Here’s the thing that makes this situation so frustrating for developers: Steam‘s rejection came with virtually no actionable feedback. The automated message included a link to Steam’s onboarding documentation and mentioned they won’t distribute content that “depicts sexual conduct involving a minor.” But Riva insists Horses contains no such content – all characters are explicitly over 20, and while the game deals with challenging themes, it’s not pornographic.
His best guess? There was an early scene where a man and his young daughter visit the farm, and the daughter rides on the shoulders of a naked adult woman (one of the “horses” – humans wearing horse masks). The studio has since changed that character to be older anyway, but they were never told this was the problem. Basically, they’ve been guessing for two years while their studio’s future hung in the balance.
The financial reality for indies
This situation highlights just how dependent indie studios are on Steam’s platform. When Valve banned Horses, Riva says it “completely erased our ability to find an external supporting publisher or partner,” because nobody in the industry considers a Steam-less indie game viable. They had to seek private funding from friends to finish development, putting them in what Riva calls a “completely unsustainable financial situation.”
And this isn’t their first mysterious run-in with Valve either. Around the same time as the Horses ban, Valve refused to provide Steam keys for their previous game Saturnalia, killing what Riva describes as “a great bundle opportunity.” When you’re running a small studio, these opaque decisions can literally make or break your business.
Artistic vision vs platform policies
Santa Ragione isn’t some random developer making shock content – they have a solid track record of creating award-winning artistic games. Their title Mediterranea Inferno just won the Excellence in Narrative Award at the Independent Games Festival. In their public statement, they argue that “Steam publicly downplays human curation in favor of algorithmic sales optimization, yet intervenes with censorship when a game’s artistic vision does not align with what the platform owners considers acceptable art.”
Meanwhile, every other platform has accepted Horses with minimal issues. Epic just asked them to update screenshots to remove nudity, which they did. GOG, Itch.io, and Humble Store had no concerns. Console partners who’ve seen the game haven’t raised content flags either. So why is Steam the only holdout? It’s the kind of question that keeps indie developers up at night.
gaming”>What this means for gaming
Look, Horses is definitely unsettling – it’s about humans treated as horses on a farm, dealing with themes of power, trauma, and responsibility. But shouldn’t adults be able to decide for themselves what art they want to engage with? When one platform holds so much power, their subjective decisions effectively shape what kinds of games get made.
Riva puts it bluntly: “Steam’s behavior passively shapes which titles developers feel safe creating, pushing preemptive censorship.” And when you’re talking about industrial-scale distribution platforms, the stakes are incredibly high for creators. The studio has funds for six months of post-launch support, but after that? Unless Horses sells way better than expected without Steam, or Valve has a sudden change of heart, we might be losing another talented indie studio to opaque platform policies.
