Horses, a first-person narrative horror game, was banned from the Epic Games Store just hours before it was set to launch on December 2nd. Then, a day after launch, the Humble store (temporarily) banned it as well. The decision shocked the developers at Santa Ragione, makers of the critically respected Saturnalia, as these storefronts were the homes they’d found for their game two years before it was preemptively banned from Steam.
Valve and Epic say Horses violates their sexual content policies. Humble hasn’t yet said why it banned the game.
They made an art piece that tows the line in the minefield so hard that it is causing explosions when people try to follow along…
Yeah ok, so sounds like they accomplished their goal in the art sense and just won’t get the wide audience and monetary rewards for making an art piece that hurt people.
I see nothing wrong here.
Theyre getting more attention from all these articles every day than they ever had before for sure. Theyre loving this. None of their games have had much success, reviews low, player counts near 0… https://steamdb.info/developer/Santa+Ragione/
I dont care what obscure indie awards they won, 99% of people commenting, complaining, etc have never heard of the studio or their games, even within the indie space, the numbers show that.
Yeah, honestly this is a fantastic ad campaign for them and they are in fact getting rewarded for towing that line by getting the conversation on them.
My sleepy brain was expecting something about Umamusume or however you spell that horse girl game
Honse
I keep seeing the “well its got nudity what did they expect” take and saw this article that talks about the meta-narrative and theme:
https://noescapevg.com/all-that-fucking-bullshit-abouthorses-and-for-what/
It being weird and uncomfortable is the point - Though obviously its not meant to be a game for everyone.
Oh, so its not just Steam banning the game. So shitting on Steam is not fair then: https://www.eurogamer.net/its-extremely-frustrating-and-also-fcked-up-one-of-the-worlds-best-indie-studios-is-facing-shock-closure-following-confounding-steam-ban
“Other people did thing so you can’t blame Steam for doing thing” I absolutely can though
Steam is the one with monopoly power, and the Horses developer has said that publishers didn’t event wasn’t to publish the game if it cannot be on Steam. This argument isn’t applicable to Epic, let alone Humble, which ended up reinstating the game within the day.
Someone needs to bring a trust-busting suit against Valve.
