Following Valve’s controversial decision to ban developer Santa Ragione’s narrative horror game Horses from Steam, rival storefront GOG – which will be selling the game when it launches next week – has weighed in, saying it wants “to give players the freedom to choose what they play, and [give creators] the space to bring their artistic work to them.”.
Italian studio Santa Ragione – whose award-winning output includes Saturnalia and Meditteranea Inferno – announced Horses back in 2023. It’s a three-hour horror adventure – blending monochrome visuals, live-action intermissions, and interactive sequences – that unfolds across 14 days on a farm where naked human “horses” are kept as livestock. It makes for some striking imagery as the game explores “the burden of familial trauma and puritan values, the dynamics of totalitarian power, and the ethics of personal responsibility”.
However, Horses made headlines this week when its release date announcement was accompanied by the news it would be available on all PC platforms with the exception of Steam. It’s a long story that Santa Ragione co-founder Pietro Righi Riva discussed with Eurogamer in more detail when the news broke, but the short version is Valve made the decision to ban Horses from its platform in 2023, saying it would not “distribute content that appears, in [its] judgement, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.”
Santa Ragione had a number of things to say about that. Firstly that it was a mischaracterisation of a brief mid-game scene – “not sexual in any way” – where a visitor to the farm lets his young daughter ride one of the horses, and secondly that the scene was altered, ageing the daughter into a 20-something woman, while the game was still in creative flux. Santa Ragione’s belief is that Horses would have passed Steam’s approval process without issue if Valve – which has refused to re-examine the final build – had not requested an early version, and the fact no other storefront has taken umbrage with the game supports that.
And now, Steam rival GOG has weighed in on social media, saying it’s “proud to give Horses a home”, and adding it “[believes] players should be able to choose the experiences that speak to them.” In a seperate comment provided to Eurogamer, the storefront elaborated further, saying GOG will be distributing Horses because its platform “is the place on which we want to give players the freedom to choose what they play, and creators can have the space to bring their artistic work to them.”
“At GOG, we aim to provide developers with a welcoming space for their projects and to make it simple for players to access the games they care about,” it continued. “We’re happy to give Horses a home… giving players another way to experience the game – and to support the Santa Ragione studio in this difficult time, we’ve decided to launch pre-orders on Horses today.”
Horses launches via GOG, the Epic Games Store, the Humble Store, and Itch.io on 2nd December. It costs €4.99/$4.99.
