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Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione will "wind down operations" after Valve ban horror game Horses from Steam
(www.rockpapershotgun.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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Without playing/seeing what Horses is like, it's difficult to evaluate Valve's decision.
That being said there is tons of weird and fucked up NSFW stuff on Steam.
Banning a transgressive game seemingly without any explicit content seems excessive.
From my perspective, this is another reason it's a bad idea to have an American company (even a somewhat user-focused one like Valve) be a steward of modern digital services. Local culture puts too much emphasis on the theatrical elements of morality. Not to mention the challenges faced by the locals in areas such as corruption and rule of law (Valve trying to cheat on refunds, adding mandatory arbitration clauses, Soviet-style kangaroo courts essentially, and operating unlicensed gambling schemes).
The trailer includes a girl riding a naked man with a horse mask and footage from a horse humping another.
This would not be the hill I choose to die upon to make a point about bad American companies - criticizing Steam for removing a horror game involving explicit nudity with borderline traces of pedophilia and bestiality in the very trailer.
It was rejected because in the build they submitted for review a minor was riding a naked person with a horse mask and valve saw that as sexual which i find fair considering ponyplay being a thing. I understand valve wanting to distance themselves from anything involving a minor that could be seen as sexual
The issue with the child was fixed in a later build. A build that Valve doesn’t want to review.
You are really giving off "it's not pedophilia, it's hebephilia" vibes here...
Yes, technically, they fixed an issue, that doesn't fix how it was able to become an issue in the first place. The developers are either going for "very, very thinly disguised fetish" or completely absentminded outrage farming in a very bad way.
Didn't think bumping the child's age to a twenty something old women counts as hebephilia. But hey, you're the fucking expert here.
https://www.horses.wtf/BannedFromSteam/
Nope, now you are giving it off more.
nervously laughs while moving away
If that's the case I can't really fault Valve here.
Yeah, I hear you. It should be based in a sane country like Australia or the United Kingdom or China or Japan.
Point is, making this an 'America bad' problem is just ignoring that it could be so much worse if it was based elsewhere.
The problem is "based anywhere": no party based on a single nation should have censorship control on the global market of a technology (high-end gaming on PC in this case). The problem is not "America bad", but the presence of America in control of many modern technologies (social network, AI, advertisement, media etc.) makes U.S. a recurring target for bigotry that mess with the overall market (this don't mean that U.S. have a global-wise issue with bigotry, things could be worse is so many key market were in the hands of any religious zealot country (being Muslim, Christian, Hebrew etc.).
We're are losing a world that was heading to technological decentralization (emails, websites, interconnected communities (such as forums, irc, bulletin boards), cryptocurrencies etc: this is going to screw with everyone, U.S. citizen themselves also.
The issue is the power, not who wields it.
You're welcome to perceive what I am saying as a reflexive "America bad" outburst driven by current developments.
And I will take the liberty of saying that it is possible that there is significant nuance to my arguement.
Not to mention that I've lived for several years across multiple countries in North America, Europe and Asia and visited another 25 countries.
Btw, I am not only flexing with the "I have travelled the world!!!" comments. :)
I am also pointing out that it would be difficult for me to enjoy living/travelling in other countries if I reflexively said things like "This place sucks! What a shithole!".
They do have a website up - https://www.horses.wtf/
by their own description:
The game looks like it's about keeping people on a ranch, with horse masks on.
I guess the banhammer was swung because of sexual violence and mutilation of subjugated slaves?
From another article posted about this earlier, the version of the game sent to Valve for review had a minor as the main protagonist.
There was a quite a bit of discussion about that on another post: https://lemmy.world/post/39297021
Based on the trailer seems like a game version of a gore/torture/faux-snuff horror movie.