Image a farm the place the horses aren’t horses in any respect. They’re bare people, masked and collared, handled as livestock. They pull ploughs on their shoulders, race for spectators, feed on hay and water.
You play a younger man despatched to work this farm for 2 weeks, regularly discovering that each job calls for complicity in one thing grotesque. The sport asks you to take part, to decide on, to turn into a part of the horror.
That is Horses, the debut recreation from Italian developer Santa Ragione and creator Andrea Lucco Borlera. It’s surreal, uncomfortable, and intentionally confronting. It’s additionally a recreation that [three of the world’s largest digital storefronts have refused to sell.
The question at the heart of this controversy cuts deeper than content policies or age ratings: who decides which art deserves to reach audiences, and on what grounds can they deny it?
A Imaginative and prescient Born from Discomfort
Borlera conceived *Horses* throughout his time as a movie scholar at Roma Tre College. The challenge attracts inspiration from surrealist filmmakers Luis Buñuel and Jan Švankmajer, alongside the provocative work of Yorgos Lanthimos.
Borlera has spoken about childhood reminiscences of his grandfather’s farm, the place horses and their handlers frightened him. That early discomfort turned the seed for one thing darker.
The sport blends live-action sequences with 3D animation, offered in stark black and white. Silent film-style title playing cards ship dialogue. The aesthetic intentionally unsettles.
Gamers see close-ups of mouths enunciating monologues via vile grins, spliced with footage of greens being watered. The fixed whirring of movie grain taunts you all through.
Over three hours, you full duties that develop more and more disturbing. You feed the “horses.” You seek for ones which have escaped. You witness interactions that illuminate an influence construction constructed on exploitation and dehumanisation.
The sport’s protagonist, Anselmo, befriends one of many enslaved people and ultimately participates of their liberation, however not earlier than the narrative forces you to reckon with your individual complicity.
Santa Ragione invested roughly $100,000 in improvement, half raised from associates. The studio hoped to recoup prices via gross sales on Steam, the platform that instructions an awesome share of PC gaming distribution. That plan collapsed in June 2023.
The Ban That Saved on Banning
Steam rejected Horses simply days earlier than Santa Ragione deliberate to announce the sport. The automated evaluate said: “No matter a developer’s intentions with their product, we is not going to distribute content material that seems, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.”
The message continued with a definitive closure: “This app has been banned and can’t be reused. Re-submissions of this app, even with modifications, is not going to be accepted.”
Santa Ragione maintains the accusation misrepresents the sport. All characters are clearly older than 20. The builders suspect the ban originated from an incomplete scene in an early construct, the place a younger woman rides on the shoulders of one of many “horses” throughout a farm go to.
The scene contained no nudity or sexual content material, however the juxtaposition of kid and masked, bare grownup seems to have triggered the rejection.
Santa Ragione revised the scene months earlier than launch, changing the kid with an grownup lady, however Steam refused to rethink.
For 2 years, the studio requested clarification. Steam redirected them to common tips about “content material that’s patently offensive or supposed to shock or disgust viewers.” No particular scenes have been recognized. No path to compliance was supplied. The door remained shut.
Then got here November 2024. GOG, the DRM-free storefront, introduced it will distribute Horses. The sport garnered constructive preview protection from shops together with The Guardian, Rock Paper Shotgun, and IGN. Anticipation constructed.
On December 1, 2024, at some point earlier than the scheduled launch, Epic Video games Retailer knowledgeable Santa Ragione that it too was banning the sport. Epic cited violations of insurance policies on “inappropriate content material” and “hateful or abusive content material.”
The corporate claimed an Worldwide Age Ranking Coalition questionnaire resulted in an Adults Solely score, regardless of Santa Ragione having already accomplished that questionnaire weeks earlier and acquired PEGI 18 and ESRB M scores.
Epic supplied no specifics about what wanted altering. The studio filed an enchantment. Twelve hours later, Epic rejected it with out additional clarification.
Hours later, Humble Retailer additionally eliminated Horses from sale, providing no clarification regardless of having beforehand assured Santa Ragione it will proceed distribution after Epic’s ban. Three main platforms. Three rejections. One recreation, accomplished and able to ship.
What the Platforms Say (and Don’t Say)
Epic Video games communications director Jake Jones supplied an announcement to PC Gamer: “We set clear tips for the content material that may be distributed on the Epic Video games Retailer and located violations of these tips throughout our intensive evaluate.”
The assertion says every part and nothing. What violations? Which tips? Epic had already accepted a number of builds of the sport, together with the ultimate model 18 days earlier than launch.
The corporate even stuffed out an age score questionnaire on behalf of the builders, contradicting their earlier scores, but supplied no clarification for why it carried out this secondary evaluate or the way it arrived at completely different conclusions.
Steam’s place stays equally opaque. The platform distributes quite a few express pornographic video games, some acknowledging authorized gray areas by stating “All characters depicted are over the age of 18” of their descriptions.
But Horses, which accommodates no pornography and censors all nudity via pixelation, receives a everlasting ban with no avenue for enchantment.
Santa Ragione factors out that mature works with comparable or stronger themes routinely seem on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Controversial administrators stay an accepted a part of streaming catalogues.
Movie operates beneath a distinct framework, one which treats provocative artwork as professional even when uncomfortable. Video games, apparently, don’t obtain the identical consideration.
The Monetary Stranglehold
The bans don’t merely damage Santa Ragione’s status. They threaten the studio’s survival. With out entry to Steam, the studio couldn’t safe exterior publishers to fund completion of Horses.
Nobody within the business considers an indie recreation viable if it might probably’t attain Steam’s large consumer base. Santa Ragione resorted to non-public funding from associates, creating what the studio describes as “a very unsustainable monetary state of affairs.”
The studio additionally encountered Steam’s opaque key distribution insurance policies. Santa Ragione’s earlier recreation, Saturnalia, was a timed unique on Epic Video games Retailer as a result of Epic partially funded improvement.
After the exclusivity interval ended and the sport launched on Steam, the studio requested keys to incorporate Saturnalia in bundles. Steam refused, citing undisclosed gross sales thresholds. With out bundle alternatives, Santa Ragione couldn’t generate income to help Horses.
This creates a brutal cycle. Builders want Steam to outlive. Steam’s insurance policies lack transparency. Builders who fall foul of these insurance policies haven’t any recourse and no clear path ahead. One rejection cascades into monetary disaster.
Comparable dynamics play out throughout digital content material distribution, the place platform gatekeepers management entry to audiences and creators battle to seek out various routes.
The state of affairs mirrors broader shifts in how impartial creators navigate platform energy. In music, impartial artists more and more bypass conventional gatekeepers, constructing audiences via various channels.
However gaming’s infrastructure stays extra centralised, making platform bans probably deadly for small studios.
The Underground Thrives
Regardless of three main platform bans, Horses launched on December 2, 2024, through GOG and itch.io. Inside days, it turned the best-selling recreation on each platforms.
GOG launched an announcement: “We’re proud to provide HORSES a house on GOG, giving gamers one other strategy to benefit from the recreation. We’ve all the time believed that gamers ought to be capable to select the experiences that talk to them.”
The Streisand impact took maintain. Protection of the bans generated extra consideration than conventional advertising and marketing may have achieved.
In an period the place viral moments can remodel cultural visibility in a single day, gamers who may by no means have heard of Horses sought it out particularly as a result of main platforms deemed it unacceptable.
Early opinions acknowledge the sport’s difficult content material whereas praising its creative ambition. IGN’s evaluate described it as “a chilling, nerve-shredding brief story” with “admirably bracing imaginative and prescient.” Edge journal highlighted how the sport’s aesthetic selections improve its “disquieting temper.”
This mirrors patterns in different media. When mainstream distributors reject transgressive artwork, underground channels protect and amplify it. Cult movies, banned books, controversial albums all discovered audiences via various distribution.
The digital age makes this even simpler. DRM-free platforms, direct downloads, and group help can maintain creators even when firms say no.
The phenomenon parallels how hip-hop artists now construct audiences on streaming platforms outdoors conventional business buildings. When typical gatekeepers shut doorways, inventive communities discover home windows.
However sustainability stays precarious. Horses succeeded partly due to publicity across the controversy. Most banned video games don’t obtain that spotlight. They merely disappear.
Horror as Mirror
The most effective horror forces confrontation with uncomfortable truths. It doesn’t exist to consolation viewers however to unsettle them, to make them query methods of energy, exploitation, and complicity.
Horses makes use of its disturbing imagery to discover themes of slavery, psychological abuse, and societal buildings that normalise violence. The participant’s discomfort serves a function.
Every job you full as Anselmo calls for you reckon with your individual complicity within the farmer’s sick fantasy. The sport asks: at what level do you cease following orders? When does participation turn into endorsement?
These questions matter. Artwork that makes us uncomfortable can spark dialogue about real-world atrocities. Sanitising artwork by eradicating something that disturbs removes artwork’s skill to problem us.
Modern horror cinema continues pushing boundaries, with indie filmmakers creating experimental narratives that confront taboo topics.
Movies like I Noticed the TV Glow and Late Night time with the Satan reveal how horror can handle identification, trauma, and societal decay via disturbing imagery. These works exist in mainstream distribution channels. Video games with comparable ambitions face completely different obstacles.
Platform gatekeepers now possess extraordinary energy to form which conversations occur. Their choices, made behind closed doorways with obscure justifications, decide which creative visions attain audiences and which vanish into obscurity. This energy operates with out transparency, with out clear requirements, with out accountability.
When David Lynch created Misplaced Freeway, when Lars von Trier made The Home That Jack Constructed, when Gaspar Noé filmed Irréversible, mainstream distributors grappled with the content material however in the end recognised these works as professional creative expressions. Movie critics debated them. Audiences selected whether or not to interact with them. The works existed in cultural dialog.
Video video games more and more face completely different remedy. Regardless of many years of maturation as an inventive medium, regardless of numerous examples of considerate, difficult work, video games nonetheless get filtered via insurance policies designed primarily for industrial leisure merchandise.
The Questions That Stay
Horses exists. You’ll be able to play it, for those who select to hunt it out on various platforms. However the controversy surrounding it reveals fractures in how we strategy interactive artwork in 2025.
Ought to platforms that operate as near-monopolies of their markets possess unchecked authority to find out acceptable creative expression? Do video video games deserve the identical protections and concerns as different artwork kinds?
What accountability do gatekeepers need to clear processes and clear requirements? When does content material moderation turn into censorship?
These aren’t summary questions. They’ve actual penalties for builders who danger every part to create difficult work, for gamers who need entry to the complete spectrum of creative expression, and for the medium itself because it continues to mature.
The talk extends past gaming. Questions on authenticity and platform management pervade inventive industries in 2025, from AI-generated music flooding streaming companies to algorithmic curation figuring out which artwork reaches audiences.
The Horses controversy represents one entrance in a broader cultural battle about who controls inventive expression and on what phrases.
Santa Ragione got down to create one thing that might stick to gamers whether or not they needed it to or not. They succeeded. However additionally they stumbled into a bigger battle about inventive freedom, platform energy, and who will get to resolve which artwork we’re allowed to expertise.
The sport business likes to proclaim that video games are artwork. Maybe it’s time the business’s strongest gatekeepers began treating them that approach.
