The company determined that an early build of the game contained “sexual conduct involving a minor.”
After Italian studio Santa Ragione publicly warned that Steam’s ban on their new title Horses threatened the studio’s survival, Valve issued its first formal response, offering “additional context” for its decision.
The game examines the weight of family trauma, puritanical values, authoritarian control, and personal accountability. It is set on a farm where unclothed people are kept and used as “horses.” Although the game contains numerous scenes with nudity, the developers stress that it is not pornographic and is not intended to arouse.
The dispute with Valve began in 2023. The company asked to review an early, unfinished build. After reviewing that build, the studio received an automated notice: the game would not be distributed on Steam because, in the platform’s view, it included “sexual conduct involving a minor”.
Santa Ragione says the contested moment involved a visitor’s daughter riding on an adult woman’s shoulders and that the scene carried no sexual connotation. During subsequent revisions, the character’s age was raised to 20 (as were the ages of all characters), but Valve declined to re-evaluate the final build.
Following the public attention, Valve released an official statement:
We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time the developer indicated the title would be released in a few months. Because of content on the store page, we informed the developer that we needed to personally inspect a build — this occasionally happens when there are concerns that a game might violate our rules. After our team played the build and evaluated the content, we explained to the developer why we could not publish the game on Steam — in full accordance with our policies and procedures. Later, the developer asked us to reconsider; our content review team discussed the matter thoroughly and ultimately communicated the final decision not to release the game on Steam.
Valve did not provide an explanation for why it refused to reassess the final build of Horses.
Source: iXBT.games