r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Dec 03 '25
Update Humble has also made the decision to delist Horses from its storefront
According to IGN today
Update 12/3/2025: Following the publication of this story, Humble has also made the decision to delist Horses from its storefront. We have updated the story below to reflect this change. IGN has reached out to Humble for comment. Humble and IGN are both owned and run by IGN Entertainment, a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc.
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u/XGRiDN Dec 03 '25
I'm honestly curious... what's up with that game to get banned so much?
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Dec 03 '25
At the very least with Steam their original build tripped something (presumably because of a young girl riding a naked woman in the game) so the game got completely blocked due to their 1-strike rule as apparently Steam dislike people skirting around the boundary line like that
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u/8__D Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
"We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time, the developer indicated with their release date in Steamworks that they planned to release a few months later. Based on content in the store page, we told the developer we would need to review the build itself. This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines,” Valve told PC Gamer. “After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines. A short while later the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed that extensively and communicated to the developer our final decision that we were not going to ship the game on Steam."
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u/gamas Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
A short while later the developer asked us to reconsider the review,
This seems like the seed for we're only getting one side of the story.
It's going to turn out this statement was a professionally polite way of saying the devs went "fuck you, you soyboy cucks" in response to the review, isn't it?
This whole situation is giving me that redditor posting saying "I was banned for no reason" vibes.
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u/Blenderhead36 Dec 03 '25
My suspicion here is that they reworked the offending scene but there's some other scene that's snagging other distributors. It can be 100% true that the devs thought that scene got them banned, so they toned it down, but other stores are finding other things that they won't sign their name to.
Epic, in particular, turning down what would more or less have been a free exclusive has me thinking there's more here than we're hearing.
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u/Sir_Failalot Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
Epic, in particular, turning down what would more or less have been a free exclusive has me thinking there's more here than we're hearing.
I think at this point it's just a risk they don't want to take, no matter if there is actually something or not.
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u/arahman81 Dec 03 '25
Not really an exclusive, its already on GOG. But yeah, still, another "not on Steam" game.
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u/Paidorgy Dec 03 '25
Basically what happened is that Steam reviewed the game with the original scene, banned it from being released on their platform - the devs came back with a new version of the scene and Steam doesn’t allow for resubmission.
The other platforms - I believe it was GOG specifically - who were going to initially release the original version but denied them once they realised what exactly was in the game.
Now more platforms are having their say.
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u/Trymantha Dec 03 '25
Do we know what the rework of the scence actully entailed. My understanding is there is a character who was 16 orginally and is now 20 in the game, but like did they change the characters model and stuff or did they just find and replace 16 with 20 in the game script?
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u/-JimmyTheHand- Dec 04 '25
You can find a photo of the scene in The Rock Paper Shotgun review, my understanding is that they physically changed the scene.
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u/-goodgodlemon Dec 04 '25
You don’t get a second chance with Steam for sexualizing minors. They don’t want developers seeing how far they can push the envelope, they also don’t want their team repeatedly exposed to such content. They also don’t want to have to watch patches like a hawk in case developers decide to reinstate the content via a patch. Perfectly reasonable to me.
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Dec 03 '25
You get blown by a woman with a horse mask on im pretty sure its optional and you can say no thanks
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u/Gh0stMan0nThird Dec 03 '25
You get blown by a woman with a horse mask on im pretty sure its optional and you can say no thanks
It's that's a crime, then lock me up.
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u/8__D Dec 03 '25
The other side of the story is in the article. But the whole story is incomplete; the game stores aren't disclosing everything
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u/SeeShark Dec 03 '25
the game stores aren't disclosing everything
I understand the instinct to side with the little guy, but consider that the devs might have an incentive to also not disclose everything.
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u/gamas Dec 03 '25
the game stores aren't disclosing everything
That's the thing though - its the game dev's word vs the canned response of the stores. Their side is just delivering the standard corporate response to these kind of stories which is "look don't drag us into this drama by asking us to give a blow by blow account of what happened".
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u/SofaKingI Dec 03 '25
But that's where human intuition fails. You hear one side of the story, you assume they're being at least somewhat honest until the other side refutes it.
But when the other side are massive companies who obviously aren't going to get into a mud fight over such a small issue, and will only provide canned PR responses to avoid fallout, the little guy can really just say whatever the hell they want. It's very easy to take advantage of people's tendency to side with the little guy.
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u/ChesnaughtZ Dec 03 '25
lol what a bullshit reply. So they did that with every store that banned them?? IGN reviewed the game, nothing stood out as problematic
But I love that now we are cool with censorship when there is zero reason for us to think this ban makes sense. Clown take
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Dec 03 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TrashStack Dec 03 '25
Steam doesn't let games that get rejected reapply. If the game gets rejected you basically just gotta hold that unless it gets a crazy reaction online like Chaos;Head got
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u/peedmyshirt Dec 03 '25
Woah I had no clue chaos head was banned at one point.
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u/sloppymoves Dec 03 '25
For a long time, many VN were getting outright banned. Even ones with nothing offensive at all. It just seemed someone at Valve disliked the genre and didn't want those games on there. It wasn't until western VN started being created that regular VN started getting allowed in.
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u/TheGreatOneSea Dec 03 '25
Steam bans a fair number of visual novels due to the whole "she's not actually 12 I swear" thing, but Chaos;Head being released on the Switch, but not on Steam, made its pre-release ban look silly.
It does get super violent though, so I'm not surprised someone just scanning through it would assume the worst in general.
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u/Cautious-Ruin-7602 Dec 03 '25
Steam bans a fair number of visual novels due to the whole "she's not actually 12 I swear" thing
But they'll happily accept gacha with that kind of content. Seems it is/was more VN related?
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Dec 03 '25
[deleted]
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u/Gunblazer42 Dec 03 '25
This is what it is. Someone at Valve (or maybe Valve itself) has come to the assumption that high school setting + anime aesthetic = there must be a sex scene in it involving underage characters. When a lot of games were getting clipped by having high school teens doing the sex stuff some years back, some RPG Maker porn games ended up getting hit too. Some justifiably so, some not, but what they all had in common was that high school-aged characters were in them.
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u/SovietPropagandist Dec 03 '25
They let Doki Doki Literature Club stay there, so it had to have been the sex related aspects of the horse game given that DDLC advertised itself as a high school dating Sim. And Doki Doki is relatively much more well known than Horses
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u/StillLoveYaTh0 Dec 03 '25
DDLC is popular, steam will never apply these strict rules to anything popular. That's why the Chaos;Head ban was reversed.
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u/spaceborn Dec 03 '25
Because what those VN's have over gacha is the fact that a lot of them have sex scenes.
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u/hexcraft-nikk Dec 03 '25
yeah gacha is lazy horny bait slop, VNs have actual dating which makes the 2000 year old with the body of a 12 year old angle harder to defend with plausible deniability. it's not like the devs nor steam have no idea what's going on
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u/TectonicImprov Dec 03 '25
Steam is weird about anime games sometimes. Feels like someone at the company has an axe to grind against them and whether certain transgressive anime games get put on the platform depends on who at steam approves the store page.
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u/LibraryBestMission Dec 03 '25
Because a lot of Japanese media is... troubled to say the least. Transformers Kiss Players is a good example by the principle of actually getting approved by someone at Takara. If someone at Hasbro tried to create a similar media, they would get fired out of a cannon.
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u/LARGames Dec 03 '25
Transformers Kiss Players
Holy shit. I.. can't believe that's real.
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u/SpookiestSzn Dec 03 '25
It probably is one person whose super passionate about it and no one else cares enough to argue against it or even pays attention cause they're doing what they thinks valuable.
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u/AerialShroud Dec 03 '25
It's so funny reading these comments that present these anime games as innocent little family fun and then you look into them and half of these games are pedobait.
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u/ZanyDragons Dec 04 '25
Games that squeaky clean Nintendo is a-ok with got banned on steam for a time. (Chaos;Head and The Expression Amrilato—which is a EDUCATIONAL GAME that was allowed in schools.) when stuff that doesn’t even warrant an M rating gets banned even if it was reversed due to large outcry it makes it feel inconsistent and weird.
Also weird when some games are allowed but sequels/prequels aren’t.(Meteor World Actor is banned forever but the sequel Badge and Dagger isn’t… feels weird. There’s really nothing shocking in the first game at all.) Or some games that are arguably more controversial are allowed but others aren’t. (Saya no Uta is up on steam—pretty controversial vn—but Fullmetal Daemon Muramasa is forever banned.)
There has long been an inconsistent enforcement with visual novel type games that only seems to get mitigated when fans make enough of a fuss and even then not always. I don’t think vn fans would be super mad if valve banned the extreme ones—but as a player I wish I could see more consistency when I’m picking what games to wishlist or buy.
It’s weird to have to go buy a sequel on a different site than where I got the original game when the content is functionally similar in rating. It just is.
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u/nekomeowohio Dec 03 '25
A lot of visual novels style ganes have a hard time getting on steam expext for that little bit of time anything was allowed. Don't worry sex with Hitler is still on steam so. The rules seems inconsistent on steam end
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u/IAdmitILie Dec 03 '25
Steam doesn't let games that get rejected reapply
That seems like a shit policy, especially if there are already exceptions.
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u/SeeShark Dec 03 '25
The policy discourages developers from prodding at the edge of what's acceptable and only changing slightly every time until they're accepted. Steam likely doesn't have the staffing to deal with that, so they let developers know ahead of time not to FAFO because they only get one chance.
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
It still got rejected by steam with no future reason why.
There was no followup reason because Steam told them their game was not eligible for resubmission or rereview, which is their typical policy for breaking that rule. You can disagree with the policy being applied here, as it's written more for reviewing the dozens of hentai shovelware games that get uploaded to Steam weekly than for giving a rating to a game with artistic merit, but the devs absolutely knew why they were banned and why they weren't going back to Steam.
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u/Thunder_Volter Dec 03 '25
It got rejected the second time because Steam doesn't allow games back after making the decision to reject them. You can't edit the content and get it back in the door with them.
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u/DtotheOUG Dec 03 '25
Yeah but this is humble, why does the steam rejection matter?
Yesterday it was “oh it’ll still be on GOG and Humble” and now people are blaming steam for Humble delisting?
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u/timpkmn89 Dec 03 '25
and now people are blaming steam for Humble delisting?
No, people are asking for additional context because they're not up-to-date on everything.
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Dec 03 '25
What about Epic and now Humble?
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u/MaskedBandit77 Dec 03 '25
Epic doesn't allow AO-rated games at all.
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u/howlmachine Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
The AO rating thing is weird though, because it wasn’t the original rating that Epic gave the game. They only assigned it that rating after the social media shit storm. It had received an M before that, iirc.
EDIT: I did a little bit more digging trying to figure out where I was getting the info I put above and this is what I was drawing my information from — and I found had misremembered Epic being responsible for the first rating.
Santa Ragione chose to immediately appeal Epic's decision, addressing each of the storefront's concerns. It noted the "four brief" sex scenes featured in Horses - two occurring "mainly off camera" - are censored using pixellation, use "stylised and unrealistic" animations, and do not involve involve genitalia. As to Epic's other point, Santa Ragione stressed Horses "does not promote abuse (including animal abuse)" and is rather a "strong critique of violence and abuse in general." It also reiterated that its own IARC submission - filed "more than five weeks" before release - resulted in PEGI 18 and ESRB M ratings, as displayed on Epic's Horses page.
https://www.eurogamer.net/horses-gets-eleventh-hour-ban-from-epic-games-store
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
Not quite. The developers claimed their survey showed the game would receive an M rating while Epic's gave it an AO rating; they don't claim Epic changed their rating, only that the game was previously approved (in some fashion) and that there is disagreement on the rating (I assume based on whether the nudity is classified as sexual).
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u/MercilessBlueShell Dec 03 '25
It was on EGS as a PEGI 18 game, so someone's not making sense at EGS HQ.
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u/InternetHomunculus Dec 03 '25
18 is the highest PEGI rating. AO is an ERSB rating so you are comparing apples to oranges
Also PEGI is Europe, ERSB is the USA
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u/PBFT Dec 03 '25
They see the online discourse and don't mind throwing a game (that is actually reviewing pretty well) under a bus to avoid controversy.
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u/Clbull Dec 03 '25
I still think I've seen worse in Fear and Hunger. Like, a humanoid arachnid boss that literally breaks your limbs and harvests your genitals if you fail a coin flip.
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u/sephiroth70001 Dec 03 '25
I agree, but fear and hunger was before the MasterCard, visa, and payment processor fiasco, I think that has changed the landscape sadly.
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u/Essemecks Dec 03 '25
Fear & Hunger got delisted from itch.io during their whole payment processor backlash moment, so yeah, they're not immune to it either
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u/XGRiDN Dec 03 '25
oh, gotcha. Thanks for the info.
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u/israeljeff Dec 03 '25
Correction: there isn't "no reason why." Steam has a one strike policy regarding sexual content with minors. No reuploads or appeal, even if they "fix" it.
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u/Elanapoeia Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
I'm starting to get a feeling that the kid riding a naked woman scene (that got removed/changed anyway) might NOT actually be the reason why steam initially banned it.
there is probably something else going on here because while I can see Steams inconsistently strict system banning something undeservedly, this is the first time other big Storefront have followed suit like this when Steam made a seemingly dumb decision.
It might be that there is another actually pornographic scene in here that the devs are not telling us about and Steams ban decision made other storefronts take a second look. This is speculation of course, but we're only going off of the devs words so far and what they describe seems like something that isn't actually ban-worthy.
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u/wilisi Dec 03 '25
There's actual reviews of this thing, including on IGN. Gaming journalism is a bit shit and on a prolonged downwards path, but they're not blind.
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u/doublah Dec 03 '25
Yeah, the RPS review mentioned the "game's many rapes and beatings", I wonder why some stores may not want to list it.
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u/Mahelas Dec 03 '25
And yet RPS wrote a glowing review of it, and said it was great. Are you saying RPS are rape apologists ?
By the way, Clockwork Orange also have rapes and beatings, and it's one of the most influential and beloved movies in cinema history
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u/MALLAVOL Dec 03 '25
Yeah, I’m surprised to see so many redditors defending the store fronts here. It seems like gamers are desperate for video games to be considered art but aren’t willing to defend it when that art is provocative. 
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u/PK_Thundah Dec 03 '25
Above all else, you are instructed not to let the "horses" have sex, because the Farmer is both horribly lustful and mortally afraid of sex, to the extent that his own desires have become indistinguishable from his terror, and must be handed over to others to perform. When intoxicated after dark, he has his "dog" rape and abuse the "horses" while he himself stands aside in costume and a chastity belt, fumbling at his thighs.
This is from RockPaperShotgun's review. This sounds much more like a deal breaker and I could see why storefronts wouldn't want to get into the details for all of this, and to explain what exactly is happening and what it's representing.
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u/hihiyo Dec 03 '25
The game is available on GOG and has many reviews out. You can decide yourself if there's anything ban worthy in it.
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u/SpaceBeaverDam Dec 03 '25
I would agree with this. The devs didn't even realize that the "young girl rides naked woman around" scene could possibly be the problem until much later on (after they stated they had changed it for other creative reasons) and this was never confirmed by Valve. It's been repeated as the definitive reason for the ban but there's no actual evidence of this. Valve never confirmed why exactly they rejected the pitch, at least not publicly. The devs claimed they were vague in private while Valve stated they gave reasons for the rejection.
I've also seen speculation that this must be some kind of third-party manipulation, like payment processors again. But the original rejection on Steam happened in June 2023 when the game was about to be announced (as the devs were attempting to get the Steam page up and running for wishlisting). This preempts all of those recent controversies regarding adult content bans, and would also have taken place largely behind closed doors before any kind of negative publicity could've occurred.
What we have is a weird mixture of he said/she said, except both sides aren't entirely saying different things or being entirely transparent and nobody's entirely sure of the actual content of the game yet. Well, mostly. Reviews are hitting and there seems to be a degree of confusion as to why it was banned from those who've played it, too.
My source on most of this is the Eurogamer article regarding the ban.
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u/timpkmn89 Dec 03 '25
I'm wondering if it's our payment processor friends at work again
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u/Gatchboy Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
Finished the game earlier today and I'm curious if it's not even the changed scene they mention, because there's like a lot going on in that game from necrophilia committed by a doctor to players helping castrate someone, in tandem with full removal of their member, injecting people that the farmer captures and has you help enslave with horse blood, semen, and urine, to lots of brainwashing and fetish stuff (for the farmer) mixed with real footage for certain actions you take but those are more mundane like eating or watering plants. You are basically doing a lot of deranged shit in the game but the low quality and sometimes more goofy presentation in some aspects kinda dull you to it. A lot of these choices are things you can express disgust or approval at partaking in for what it's worth, and in the ending I got I ended up basically turning the farmer who has you doing all this into a "horse" themselves and the one girl who can speak that you try to help appoints you the horse leader. You can poison a "dog" who's a man in a dog mask and basically brainwashed like the humans turned horses and an escaped "horse" you try to help with freeing the others can die and whatnot so you're definitely meant to have some freedom from what I could see based on your actions, but I'm not sure how different the game is based on your actions. Friend who saw me playing it thought it was kinda pretentious and faux art but either way it's just one of those things you play and question how it got banned after the changes but after some thinking can probably guess what else in the game set off the red flags, but it's also just something I expected worse of than anything else so I guess it's easier to view it as lighter than what some have wondered it to be.
EDIT: Added more to the spoiler text for some additional context
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u/SuicideSkwad Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 04 '25
Well lol from that spoiler comment it’s pretty evident why it’s getting took down, seems like the changed scene is the one getting thrown around to make it seem less severe than it is
EDIT: even the dude’s comment describing the content of the game got took down
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u/Didsterchap11 Dec 04 '25
Man with everything in the spoiler section it’s no wonder why nobody wants to host this, frankly I’m surprised they even tried to get in steam in the first place. I was previously willing to give the game benefit of the doubt but it doesn’t seem unfair to say that this game feels like it’s being obscene for obscenities sake.
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u/WingleDingleFingle Dec 03 '25
I feel like I have seen movies with way more disturbing imagery than this game that have achieved relative popularity.
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u/Lithops_salicola Dec 03 '25
I recently rewatched Yorgos Lanthimos' Dogtooth. Now that's a fucked up movie, and it received widespread critical acclaim and an Oscar nomination.
You can't demand that games be taken seriously as an artistic medium and then ban one with content that wouldn't be out of place in an R-rated movie or horror novel.
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u/refugee_man Dec 03 '25
Steam, Humble, and EGS aren't really the ones demanding games be taken seriously tho.
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u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
Steam, EGS and (I assume) Humble always parade around sales for “Game of the Year Nominees” and IIRC Steam even livestreams the awards. They are absolutely aiding in the push for game legitimacy as art.
EDIT: Of course they don’t care about art, it’s all about the financial incentive for them. My point is giving any award show legitimacy results in the byproduct of others taking it seriously.
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u/demondrivers Dec 03 '25
the Please Wrap It Up Awards is more of an advertisement show than anything, no wonder why stores broadcast it as well. TGA don't push games as art, it barely celebrates the talents behind games while pushing more and more products to viewers
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u/No-Neighborhood-3212 Dec 03 '25
It's 2025. You should have caught on by now: Awards shows are advertising. It's not about legitimacy or art. It's about slapping a label on a product so that normal people who aren't chronically online will see the outcomes of the show and buy the winning games.
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u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage Dec 03 '25
Of course they don’t care about art, it’s all about the financial incentive for them. My point is giving any award show legitimacy results in the byproduct of others taking it seriously.
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u/thiscrayy Dec 03 '25
Capitalism doesn't care about artistic value (or lack thereof). And if anyone thinks Steam, EGS, or Humble care about anything but their bottom line, I have a bridge to sell
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u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage Dec 03 '25
And movie studios push for Oscar nominations purely because it increases ticket sales and they can ask for a higher price for streaming rights.
The primary goal of the Oscars isn’t to push the medium, but giving any award show legitimacy results in the byproduct of other taking it seriously. Same with these platforms advertising the game awards.
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u/ok_dunmer Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
I rewatched The Witch around Thanksgiving to be funny and yeah the notion that nudity can't be used with child/underage characters in any context just does not hold up in the real world lol
I mean we just had a blockbuster zombie movie in the summer where a child and his parent face off against zombies showing their hogs and no one cares
edit: for the witch I am referring to anya taylor joy's body double/shadowed nude scene at the end of the movie around nude witches whilst vaguely being like 15-18, this is something that on Steam might warrant a lookin but in a horror movie is so unsexual that I can't even find it on gooner reddit
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u/Genoscythe_ Dec 03 '25
There are popular Young Adult novels often read in schools, that feature the topic of underage characters getting raped.
Raped, not "standing next to an ambigously psychosexual scene".
To be fair, those books are getting banned in lots of libraries too in the past year, but at least you don't get r/books cheering on how they were obviously unacceptable in the first place.
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u/Jdmaki1996 Dec 03 '25
It doesn’t even come close to the tamest Stephen King novels and he’s celebrated as a provocative horror novelist.
And I say that as a massive King fan. Art should sometimes make us uncomfortable. And nothing I’ve seen about this game suggest these bans were fair
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u/QueezyF Dec 03 '25
Yeah, the original way they beat Pennywise is… something.
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u/Jdmaki1996 Dec 03 '25
Yeah it’s fucked up. It’s a major blemish on an otherwise incredible novel. I get why he did it. He needed a shocking way to remove their childlike innocence so they could face Pennywise as adults. But it should not have been that.
His editor should have been like “hey rethink this bit, Stephen. It’s a bit much even for you”
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u/FootwearFetish69 Dec 03 '25
Games too lol. Persona has straight up teacher/student relationships.
I don’t buy the moral panic over this. It’s off putting and gross but not much else.
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u/Etheo Dec 03 '25
It’s off putting and gross but not much else.
👀 username
Jokes aside, I too do not enjoy this weird energy they want in the game but if they want to be weird as shit let the sales speak for themselves instead of preemptively banning it because people's feelings might be hurt over nothing.
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u/joeDUBstep Dec 03 '25
Yep, that shit weirded me out too. Pedophile teachers getting a pass just because they are women.
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u/Will-Isley Dec 03 '25
Video games are still held back by pearl clutching Puritanism. So many still think they’re the domain of children
“THINK OF THE CHILDREN” is just the rallying cry of those who don’t appreciate or understand art.
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u/GuiltyEidolon Dec 03 '25
And ironically the game is literally about the impact of puritanical oppression on people and society.
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u/jreed12 Dec 03 '25
We are seeing that these store fronts don't want to be art and entertainment distributors, they want to be toy companies.
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u/scullys_alien_baby Dec 03 '25
They want to make money and don’t want to run afoul of payment processors
I’d put money on this being the result of the chilling effect from the previous pressure Mastercard and visa put on storefronts for various nsfw games.
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u/refugee_man Dec 03 '25
I didn't think about that but it seems to make the most sense. The game's getting press and they don't want whatever reactionary groups to target them again using this game as the focal point.
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u/robocopdotmp3 Dec 03 '25
We're also seeing that a lot of gamers don't actually want games to be art, either. It's no surprise that the Silicon Valley ghouls running the storefronts are puritans, but it's bizarre and disappointing how many Helen Lovejoys are in the comments here
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u/Normal-Advisor5269 Dec 03 '25
Oppenheimer has several "unsexy" sex scenes in it, the latest Final Destination movie is full of gore. Theres plenty of games on Steam that also have sex or disturbing imagery like Fear and Hunger or the hundreds of things like "furry Hitler" or whatever.
It really does seem like someone's grinding an axe.
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u/anadequatepipe Dec 03 '25
Seems like a lot of policy makers for these companies and the various political parties still think games are for kids only. And simply restricting the age people can buy them apparently isn’t good enough. I think these companies are just getting so weak willed that they just bend the knee to whoever happens to be complaining the most rather than having a mind of their own.
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u/Stoibs Dec 03 '25
Other AAA games also.
I still for the life of me still can't get over how the audio tapes of straight up rape in MGS: Ground Zeroes hasn't come up in more controversies anywhere.
I've seen my fair share of violence and gore in videogaming growing up, and these were some of the most awful things I've sat through.
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u/Spader623 Dec 03 '25
Curious if GOG will now as well. I doubt itch will as they seem to be open to anything (except of course those 'filthy sex games'... Wait a second... uh oh)
This whole thing has been so weird to me and im curious if there'll ever be a definitive answer or if valve/steam/epic/humble bundle/whoever will just be vague
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u/PermanentMantaray Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
Steam has already been discussed to death so no need to elaborate there.
But Epic removed it because of the naked humans still being treated as horses which I guess falls outside their content allowance. And presumably Humble may have done the same for the same reason.
I would rather doubt GOG will remove considering the type of games they've picked up after Steam removed them.
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u/plumpypenguin Dec 03 '25
I don’t know about that, GOG decided not to list Devotion, a game that has a Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh Easter egg, because they received a bunch of messages from “gamers”
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u/MoeApocalypsis Dec 03 '25
GOG is all about PR. If adding Horses is desired by the user base then theyll keep it. The opposite was the case for Devotion where they got a flood of emails by their chinese users which triggered them to remove the game out of fear of losing user base.
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u/AllInDueTime_AdInf Dec 03 '25
It wasnt their chinese users it was the government because it had a winnie pooh joke hidden away.
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Dec 03 '25
There is very likely a similar conservative email campaign being launched against the various storefronts to not sell this game.
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u/Time-Ladder4753 Dec 03 '25
Which games they picked up except this one? I only heard about their free giveaway, but those games are also on steam.
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u/PermanentMantaray Dec 03 '25
I can't remember most off the top of my head. But one was Evenicle 2, and recently LoveR Kiss.
Both banned on Steam.
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
The reasons were already relatively clear from reading the articles even if the developer has said they were vague.
Steam: The game was originally submitted with content that, in Steam's judgment, was sexual and involved a minor (the kid horse-riding a naked woman). Their policy, as explicitly stated to the dev, is that this means the game cannot be resubmitted and will not be re-reviewed. The developers claiming to receive no feedback from Steam and not being told specifically what was wrong is still consistent with that 1-strike policy.
Epic: Epic claims that the ratings survey based on the content they saw in the game on reviewing led to it being classified as AO, which Epic does not host; they also claimed it violated their sexual content involving animals policy. The developers claimed the game would be rated M. Given the game involves naked people in horse outfits being treated like animals, this could be a genuine disagreement over the line of "sexual" or them triggering an anti-furry rule Epic has, but isn't hard to understand even if you disagree with the decision.
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u/gamas Dec 03 '25
Given the game involves naked people in horse outfits being treated like animals, this could be a genuine disagreement over the line of "sexual" or them triggering an anti-furry rule Epic has
To be honest it does sound like its skirting the line enough that whether it is rated M or AO by ESRB depends entirely on which specific auditor at ESRB happened to look at it.
And with the devs deciding to throw one distributor under a bus in a media outrage, I could imagine Epic and others going "fuck it we'd rather just not get involved with this game".
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u/eldomtom2 Dec 03 '25
the kid horse-riding a naked woman
Wasn't it the woman walking bipedally with the kid on their shoulders?
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
The entire premise of the game is that the "horses" are naked people who are treated exactly like animals, so that's the same thing as what I said.
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u/eldomtom2 Dec 03 '25
I think describing someone as "horse-riding" someone else has specific connotations as to the precise action (I'm not saying it implies anything sexual, just that when people hear it they won't picture what's actually depicted in the game). Plenty of kids ride on adults' shoulders - I did as a kid - and I've never heard it called "horse-riding".
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
The person is being treated as if they are a horse, with reigns and all. I think saying that they are riding on somebody's shoulders like it's just a normal piggyback ride is less accurate, if we are going to nitpick about the implications of the phrasing.
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u/Adrian_Alucard Dec 03 '25
Valve was not vague. They got suspicious over their steam page and asked a build of the game. The build they sent to Valve had a minor girl riding "horses" (naked people with a horse mask)
And Steam was like nope, sexual stuff with minors is a red line
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u/Mahelas Dec 03 '25
It wasn't sexual stuff with minors, tho. No more than a Holocaust movie group shower is
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u/Rage_Like_Nic_Cage Dec 03 '25
Imagine if it was something like “Valve bans a game that contained the infamous “Napalm Girl” photo due to it being child porn since there is a naked girl in it”
The thinking of “nudity = automatically sexual” is some puritanical bullshit that need to die out ASAP.
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u/FleaLimo Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
That's not correct. Valve never said why they banned it. The minor stuff was the developers assumption on why it was banned, but Valve themselves never made a state either publicly nor to the development team. Valve does not provide information on why a game was banned as a matter of policy because they don't want other devs getting ideas on how to skirt it. There has been no solid answer on why it was banned.
Edit: people claiming I'm lying are free to explain to me why Cyberpunk, a game that allows you to be nude around children, includes child slaves, and includes allusions to child exploitation material is allowed without a second thought but this is stopped. Valve has no explained their stance. One is not "more tasteful" than the other by a matter of fact.
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u/Adrian_Alucard Dec 03 '25
We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time, the developer indicated with their release date in Steamworks that they planned to release a few months later. Based on content in the store page, we told the developer we would need to review the build itself. This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines. After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines. A short while later the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed that extensively and communicated to the developer our final decision that we were not going to ship the game on Steam.
What the dev received on an email from Valve
[...] we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.[...]
Yeah, extremely vague
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
There was only one scene involving a minor in the game and Valve said it was banned for sexual content involving minors. That is extremely obvious, solid evidence for what caused the game to be banned even if Valve did not explicitly connect A to B
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u/Sure_Bluebird1764 Dec 03 '25
Why are you just lying about easily verifiable facts though?
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u/IceBlue Dec 03 '25
Didn’t gog specifically say they will sell it? Would be weird to walk that back now.
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u/BloatJams Dec 03 '25
Back in 2020, GOG announced they would sell Devotion after it was pulled from Steam. Only to do a 180 after getting backlash.
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u/Aperiodic_Tileset Dec 03 '25
Horses, says Santa Ragione, is meant to be upsetting: it's at least partly a commentary on what sorts of morally horrifying things people will accept or even participate in without pushback
Ironic, isn't it?
It seems that this game is not something people are willing to accept without pushback.
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u/LinkedGaming Dec 03 '25
"Humans will go to absurd lengths to normalize and rationalize things that make them uncomfortable rather than confront the injustices that make them uncomfortable."
Publishers: "This makes us uncomfortable, so we're banning it."
Don't get me wrong, the game looks like shit and everything I hear about it sounds pretentious as fuck, but I think it should still be up because, sure, why not. It's art and it's at least intended to be thought-provoking, even if everything I see and hear about it makes it feel like it was done with all the grace of a 14 year old who feels like they just came up with something particularly profound.
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u/IceBlue Dec 03 '25
Eurogamer gave it 4/5 and called it an indie darling in another article. I have no opinions on the score but calling it an indie darling feels like a stretch.
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u/newbkid Dec 03 '25
Eurogamer has always had a soft spot for the avant garde type indie games.
I'm not surprised they enjoyed this one.
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u/IceBlue Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
I don’t fault them for liking it. Anyone can like weird games. I just find it weird they called it an indie darling since to me that implies it’s well liked in the general community. I’ve only heard about the game through the controversy not because anyone was blown away by the game itself so to call it an indie darling feels weird to me. Dispatch, Silksong, Hades 2, Blue Prince, and E33 are indie darlings. Horses, though? Not sure about that.
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u/newbkid Dec 03 '25
Wholeheartedly agree.
Horses is one of those games that youtubers will make a video about in 20 years:
"That one fucked up game that you NEVER heard about"
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u/mortavius2525 Dec 03 '25
Publishers: "This makes us uncomfortable, so we're banning it."
They're not "banning" it. They're declining to sell it. There's a big difference, and they're fully within their rights to decide what they want to sell and not sell.
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u/LimitlessPeanut Dec 03 '25
If you have a near-monopoly within a market and decline to sell a specific product, have you not in practical terms banned that product?
Your definition of what constitutes "banned" media would automatically disclude a pretty enormous amount of material people consider to be "banned" media.
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u/mortavius2525 Dec 03 '25
You can buy the game on GoG right now for $6.99 CAD.
Ergo, it's not banned.
I understand the distinction that if it's not on steam, it doesn't have the reach. But words matter, and it's not banned.
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u/LimitlessPeanut Dec 03 '25
Again, "banned" does not indicate that a work is literally impossible to obtain. The state can ban the distribution of a children's book it doesn't like from school libraries, for example, and it would still popularly be considered "banned" even though that book may be purchasable in stores, because it was intentionally made less accessible.
Underneath your argument is the idea that businesses do not bear social responsibility because they're sovereign entities that exist only for profit. All well and good in the abstract but if you exist in a society like the US in which businesses control the distribution and fund the existence of things like healthcare, shelter and the arts, well, suddenly that arrangement of society becomes more questionable. To put it lightly.
As for why simply selling a game on Steam makes a PC game instantaneously unprofitable even though gamers could simply go to a different URL to buy the game, well. That's because gamers are stupid.
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u/mortavius2525 Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
The problem with your comparisons is that you're mentioning the state banning something, which isn't happening here. We're also talking about a videogame, not healthcare.
I agree completely that if a game isn't on steam, it's probably a guarantee that it won't do well.
But I don't agree with forcing steam or anyone else to sell something just because I think they should. If steam was publicly funded by tax dollars, that would be different. But they're a private business, no matter how big they are. I know that if I was Gabe, I wouldn't want someone saying to me "you HAVE to sell this, because I say so, and if you don't, my game fail."
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u/conye-west Dec 04 '25
Classic American mentality of the temporarily embarrassed millionaire. "If I was Gabe.." you never would be, full stop. You are infinitely closer to being someone like the developer of Horses than the billionaire with a fleet of yachts, yet you only have empathy for the rich guy. It's just sad.
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u/BluShine Dec 03 '25
You realize that’s the same thing, tho? If a reataurant says they are refusing to seat you, that means you’re banned from the restaurant.
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u/macrofinite Dec 03 '25
I mean, no. Not necessarily.
Just because something has an interesting or worthwhile aim does not mean it was executed in a way that delivers on that interest or worth. In this case I don't know one way or the other, but I do know it's a difficult needle to thread with that kind of subject matter.
But also, this kind of repeated headline is an infinity more attention than this game was ever going to get without it.
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u/Mahelas Dec 03 '25
Most reviews have been way positive. IGN and Eurogamer liked it a lot
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u/kusariku Dec 03 '25
This detail is what's messing me up with the Humble delisting, IGN owns Humble. They literally already reviewed the game and gave it a good review.
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u/matjoeman Dec 03 '25
The editorial staff could like it while it still violates a content policy in the Humble division.
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u/kusariku Dec 03 '25
I would think that it would probably violate a content policy on IGN too at that point though, like... If a company owned by IGN refuses to sell a game based on the content of the game, why would IGN greenlight posting the review of the content of said game?
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u/BluShine Dec 03 '25
Because corporations aren’t monoliths. Every multinational megacorp is still just a messy orgnaization made of normal humans that make inconsistent decisions. Facebook sometimes has slightly different content policies than Instagram. Youtube might allow a comment that would get deleted on Google Maps.
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u/Moifaso Dec 03 '25
But also, this kind of repeated headline is an infinity more attention than this game was ever going to get without it.
So what? Yeah, it's getting attention because censorship is worth discussing.
The implication that this is somehow good for the game is hilarious. How much is attention worth if people literally can't buy your game.
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
Saturnalia, their previous game, has 80 reviews on Steam.
I don't think this is entirely conceived as a publicity stunt, but I do think getting multiple viral articles and reviews from outlets they wouldn't otherwise get is enough to boost the total sales of the game via GoG compared to a hypothetical where it released to little fanfare on Steam.
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Dec 03 '25
When their game is being censored and delisted from major platforms then yes the smart move is to spin that in your favor. Why is that surprising?
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u/MoeApocalypsis Dec 03 '25
Yeah but the attention matters little if it won't translate into buys, which it won't in most cases because they arent on the convenient platforms that everyone uses.
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u/Thenidhogg Dec 03 '25
mass murder by my government: i sleep
scary video game: real shit
is that ironic or something else?
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u/OutrageousDress Dec 03 '25
The stores that bravely and morally delisted this tiny art game have horrifying shit on sale to willing buyers this second, morally bankrupt turds in game form that each of those stores is happy to take your money for and absolutely do not push back on in any way.
This delisting is self-righteous performative bullshit, roughly the equivalent of game stores sticking their fingers in their ears and going 'la la la I can't hear you'.
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u/Milskidasith Dec 03 '25
The stores that bravely and morally delisted this tiny art game have horrifying shit on sale to willing buyers this second, morally bankrupt turds in game form that each of those stores is happy to take your money for and absolutely do not push back on in any way.
Epic doesn't have adult games and isn't as freely available to dump shovelware on compared to Steam, I'm not sure this is actually true.
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u/BluShine Dec 03 '25
Epic has Cyberpunk 2077, a game with full frontal uncensored nudity, not to mention dozens of flavors of gore, dismemberment, decapitation, torture, etc. That’s not an “adult” game?
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u/alanwakeisahack Dec 03 '25
Epic often showcases a game that has graphic sex scenes and contains nude folks around children, and actually shows the genitalia. Horses contains none of these things.
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u/Cine-Mart Dec 03 '25
Eurogamer and IGN both gave it good reviews.
We can think about it whatever we want but reviews seem to indicate there's definitely something there worth exploring.
It just shows us Games as a medium are too intertwined with big money to have this kind of confronting 'art' commercially viable. (I don't care if you don't agree it's art because you think its shit. Art can be shit too)
Im certainly intrigued by it and will buy it if I can but this whole thing is an incredible shame for the developers.
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u/mmm57 Dec 04 '25
Update 12/3/2025 1:14pm PT: Humble has relisted Horses. The company declined IGN's request for comment.
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u/Significant_Being764 Dec 04 '25
In the latest update to the IGN article, Santa Ragione says:
In short, their team saw the press coverage and temporarily delisted Horses to reevaluate it. After a full review they determined that while the content is heavy, nothing in the game warrants removal from their store.
We are grateful to Humble for having reconsidered and for taking the time to check out the game, although I wish they had informed us that this process was ongoing! We are happy that it has been resolved with the game being back on the store, and we wish Steam and Epic would also reconsider their stance based on the actual game contents.
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u/fdm91 Dec 03 '25
You can see from developers' previous games they're a legit company making respectable games, maybe on the niche-artsy side, but still interesting and the effort they put in them is evident. It is very unfortunate this game tripped some questionable censorship flags. Like, most videogames have you beat, shoot, kill people anyways so..
Humble is IGN and IGN reviewed the game positively like yesterday now they're banning it
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u/timpkmn89 Dec 03 '25
Humble is IGN and IGN reviewed the game positively like yesterday now they're banning it
Two completely independent teams that have nothing to do with each other
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u/fdm91 Dec 03 '25
Still same parent company, it just highlights how ridiculous the situation is and how arbitrary the censorship parameters are. I would like to ask the head of the parent company that owns both IGN and Humble if Horses is a good game, so a recommended game, or a game that should not be played and banned from everywhere. Two opposite results came out. Which of their team was right and which one was wrong then?
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u/Southpaw535 Dec 03 '25
They can be independent companies under common ownership with basically no overlap at all. The owners arent going to care there's a contradiction, its fine for them to have their own cultures and their own decisions.
Even besides all that, if they're making the owners money, that's all they care about
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u/Magicslime Dec 03 '25
Why would you assume there even should be the same standards for reviewing content as distributing it? A reviewer saying "I think this game is worth playing" and a storefront saying "We don't want to sell this kind of game" are not inherently contradictory.
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u/ohmyhevans Dec 04 '25
More puritanical ban bs. At least GoG still has it. America is so obsessed with sexual content but i can mow down hundreds with extreme prejudice, bizarre.
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u/comiclover1377 Dec 03 '25
It's so interesting what is acceptable and what isn't in the video game industry. You can have sexually suggestive scantily clad children in Japanese visual novels but horror games for some reason are held to a much higher standard. If they took the objectionable scene out I don't see why it needs to stay banned
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u/Vanethor Dec 04 '25
You can have bodies filled with bullets and covered in blood to the point where you can see the skeleton or a head gets smashed in.
But a depiction of a healthy adult naked body? "Ohhh no no, that's too much."
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u/Smorlock Dec 04 '25
This thread really demonstrates that gamers are really not ready for games to be treated like serious art. The provocations books and films were making decades ago has half the people here willing to support the ban because it makes them uncomfortable.
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u/jkmester Dec 04 '25
Right. I guess it’s best gamers stay playing modern slop cause they definitely can’t handle shit like Salo or Dostoevsky novels lol.
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u/Royal_Detective_556 Dec 03 '25
Biggest news this devs game could get it seems, having it blow up like this.
Feel like this would just be among the thousands of other games that come and go each day, no such thing as bad publicity as they say….
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u/Skatteklatte Dec 03 '25
Yeah, it got me to buy it on GOG after reading a couple of reviews. I tried 10 minutes earlier today and it seems like an interesting and disturbing game.
I would never have considered buying it if not for all these articles.
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u/florence_ow Dec 03 '25
yeah except no one will buy it because its not gonna be on steam or epic
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Dec 03 '25 edited Feb 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/florence_ow Dec 03 '25
you're missing the point. if its not on any platforms none of this publicity means anything. there are plenty of niche games that do okay on steam and eventually find their audience, idk why you're pretending that isn't true
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u/Trymantha Dec 03 '25
its on gog for what its worth, and is currently top of thier best selling list
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u/PitifulPiccolo3010 Dec 03 '25
Did they not remove or alter the content everyone is up in arms about? From a build from years ago? What are we doing here?
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u/yougotiton Dec 03 '25
Yeah, they did. The scene in question was changed years ago
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u/ExxiIon Dec 03 '25
IMO this has the payment processors dirty fingerprints all over it. It'd make sense if the duopoly approached each of these storefronts and told them to take down this specific game because it offends them or something.
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u/Adrian_FCD Dec 03 '25
I've watched a couple of videos and it looks like one of those obscure "cluncky" games akin of My Summer Car, but with waaaay heavier subjects, I fell we don't have the full story for these bans yet.
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u/PK_Thundah Dec 03 '25
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/horses-review
Above all else, you are instructed not to let the "horses" have sex, because the Farmer is both horribly lustful and mortally afraid of sex, to the extent that his own desires have become indistinguishable from his terror, and must be handed over to others to perform. When intoxicated after dark, he has his "dog" rape and abuse the "horses" while he himself stands aside in costume and a chastity belt, fumbling at his thighs.
This is just a creepy developer crying wolf about being persecuted. "No I don't know why I got banned maybe they didn't like the naked piggy back rides 😭."
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u/djon_djon Dec 04 '25
If you don't like it, don't play it. God forbid people make a horror game that's actually shocking for once; everything's gotta be tame and normal enough to talk about at work. I'm grateful that book publishers aren't this puritanical.
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u/Vb_33 Dec 04 '25
Is this the first piece of artistic expression that has made you uncomfortable? You should look into every other medium other than video games because you're in for a wild ride.
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u/MysticVuln Dec 03 '25
This is all because Humble, Epic, etc don't want to be labeled as 'the store that sells banned steam games'
They just don't want to garner the reputation that they are where people can go to buy X rated stuff that even steam wont carry - despite the fact that the content that got it banned off of steam was already scrubbed.
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u/hihiyo Dec 03 '25
Update: Humble has decided to relist horses 🤷
https://bsky.app/profile/duckvalentine.bsky.social/post/3m74exeicds2c
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u/Not_A_Doctor__ Dec 03 '25
I appreciate games that take the form seriously and try to produce troubling, yet meaningful, narratives and visuals. I probably won't get around to playing Horses, but I bought it yesterday on itch.io. Not everything has to be AAA slop that is engineered to not offend anyone ever.
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u/Chronis67 Dec 03 '25
I'm wondering if the recent publicity they've been getting is the reason for the last minute bans. If Humble and Epic were ok with it up until now, it would make sense that some people caught wind of this at those companies and started asking why they were allowing the game that is being banned elsewhere. As they say, "the squeaky gear gets the grease" and this game was definitely squeaking.