The company saw "sexual behavior involving a minor" in the early build of the game.
After the Italian studio Santa Ragione publicly stated that the ban of their new game Horses on Steam threatens the company's existence, Valve gave an official comment for the first time, providing "additional context" to its decision.
The game tells about the burden of family trauma, puritanical values, totalitarian power, and personal responsibility. The action takes place on a farm where naked people are kept as "horses." Despite the abundance of scenes with naked characters, the developers emphasize that the game is not pornographic and is not intended for arousal.
The dispute with Valve began back in 2023. The company asked to provide an early, incomplete build of the game for review. After viewing, the studio received an automated letter: the game will not be distributed on Steam, because, according to the platform, it contains "sexual behavior involving a minor".
Santa Ragione claims that it was about a scene in which the daughter of a farm visitor rides on the shoulders of an adult woman, and this scene had no sexual undertones. In the process of refinement, the age of the character was increased to 20 years (as well as all characters), but Valve refused to re-check the final version of the game.
After the noise in the information field, Valve issued an official statement:
We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time, the developer indicated that the game would be released in a few months. Due to the materials on the store page, we informed the developer that we needed to personally check the build - this sometimes happens if there are concerns that the game may violate our rules. After our team went through the game and studied the content, we explained to the developer why we would not be able to release the game on Steam - in full compliance with our rules and procedures. After a while, the developer asked to reconsider the decision; our content review team discussed this in detail and eventually informed the developer of the final decision not to release the game on Steam.
At the same time, Valve did not comment on why it refused to check the final build of Horses.
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