Currently, only GOG and Itch are still selling this game.
Wait, I thought this game was a depiction of what we subject horses to, using a horror lens to drive home the point? I’ve never heard of something less sexy?
The game company seems to have thought that they could drum up sales on other platforms by making this a media thing. Based on the additional platforms pulling out, it might have backfired. They could have let their little horse-porn game quietly release on every platform but Steam and made enough to get by. Instead they drew attention to themselves.
Did it not work tho? This was my first itch.io purchase ever
Not arguing the effectiveness of drumming up drama to sell your game, but they have also lost the accessibility of three major platforms in doing so.
Steam was the first major storefront to refuse to carry Horses, a first-person psychological horror adventure about “the burden of familial trauma and puritan values, the dynamics of totalitarian power, and the ethics of personal responsibility” set on a ranch where nude human beings in horse masks are treated as livestock.
Publisher Santa Ragione said in November that Valve declined to carry Horses because it contained “content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.” Santa Ragione disputed that characterization, but an appeal was rejected and the ban stands.
Seems like it’s treading a very fine line…
content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor
I’m assuming they don’t mean a suggestive camera pan, but actually something problematic on screen, in which case, I totally support the ban. Devs were given the opportunity to change it, and they said no. Ban away imho. The fact that this is considered controversial is pretty disturbing to me.
I’m almost thru the game and I did not notice any sexual conducts with minors
EDIT: Btw. Something that I thought was only done for screenshots, but the nudity in-game is censored/pixelated.
Yep, I’ve since read some other articles and it seems there’s more to this specific case
It was a child doing pony play, riding a naked adult man-horse. The dev claimed it was not sexual.
This was removed later but it’s the build you send for review that gets reviewed. Other stores got a later version, hence why it passed on those.
Dev was not given a chance to remove it as it turns out steam has a policy that anything that resembles CSAM gets denied permanently.
I haven’t heard about the details, what’s your source on that?
As far as I recall, the developer said he didn’t know the actual reason for the ban.
Some previous article which contained valve’s response, and a description of the scene. I didn’t find it immediately, but I’ll check again.
What’s CSAM?
Child Sexual Abuse Material. Legalese for child porn and adjacent things.
I also was wondering why, it’s always been called CP and then recently they changed acronym 🤷
Like the other user said, porn implies some level of consent which children cannot give. Calling it csam ensures there’s no confusion about it being abuse.
Calling it csam ensures there’s no confusion about it being abuse.
Just confusion about what the stupid acronym stands for.
Calling it “porn” makes it sound more legitimate and less like the heinous abuse that it really is.
Pretty sure it’s child sexual abuse material
The devs were not told what needed to change even after asking, so they tried to remove anything that they suspected could be taken the wrong way, asked for reconsideration or clarification, but receive no response.
This is false.
They submitted to steam, who asked for a preliminary build of the game (one would assume due to concerns about the content). The build provided included a small child reading a naked man like a horse.
Steam denied the game based on the inclusion of CSAM, and advised the devs directly of this decision in what the devs call “an automated email”, as if steam is out there personally hand writing rejection letters for every failed game out there.
The devs claim to have changed the scene, but it seems that Steam has a zero-tolerance policy on games that feature CSAM. And, I mean, Fair.
It seems a stretch to call (at least as far as I understand it), a naked (fictional) underage character riding a horse CSAM? Sure, it’s definitely not in good taste, but… CSAM?
CSAM is child abuse, there are no children here. Is there a clear line between someone drawing and actual real child abuse? Because, IMHO, there definitely should be.
I agree that steam shouldn’t allow such content, we don’t want it, but I definitely disagree with the semantics here.
Or am I missing something obvious??
You are, it wasn’t a horse in the build they sent to Steam, it was a naked man. If you have a naked girl on a horse I think that qualifies too, you have an underage character that’s naked.
Forming an opinion from your made up justification is a sign of poor judgement
It’s a direct quote from the article you’re commenting on, and that my opinion is based on.
But please, don’t let me stop you from attacking my character instead of my argument
I was talking about your comment, not the quote. Weird that you assumed otherwise
“I’m assuming they don’t mean a suggestive camera pan, but actually something problematic on screen, in which case, I totally support the ban. Devs were given the opportunity to change it, and they said no. Ban away imho. The fact that this is considered controversial is pretty disturbing to me.”
Devs were not given the opportunity to change it as it wasn’t there in the first place
Yes it was
Based solely off the trailer I can see how a big American storefront would err on the side of caution here. There is very little to gain from carrying a game decidedly built with controversy in mind, but a lot to loose.
With the publicity around it and sales still possible through alternative stores maybe things will turn out alright for the developer in the end. “Banned” media is always in demand, after all.
Unless it unexpectedly sells gangbusters, the dev says they’re likely to shut down as not having the massive steam audience to sell to won’t net them enough to continue. And people are stupidly loyal to valve for some reason.
That’s because Valve is privately owned and this has largely resisted the enshittification that largely plagues public companies and private equity frims.
Except people give them passes for shit that they don’t extend to other companies. The blind loyalty is stupid
Such as? Perhaps if you specified on what they’re getting a pass for people could be a little less blind.
It very well could be true, but the dev also seemed full of shit in the first interview I saw, pretending that he had no clue why it was banned.
I mean, he released the communication he’s received. It’s not super clear. And the things he thinks it was isn’t even in the current version of the game
The response said “no CSAM”.
If they had to scratch their heads trying to figure out what parts of the game needed to change to not include allusions to that, then they have bigger problems than not releasing on Steam.
They’d be as well carrying on. Its in a pretty unique position as being a game that people are talking about before its even finished, which is pretty uncommon for most titles, and can be “the game they tried to ban” which did wonders for Manhunt, GTA and Postal.
Valve is pretty upfront about being a business first and foremost. Their customers are loyal because they consistently provide high value at reasonable prices, even though they are in a dominating position in the market. They’ve taken unpopular decisions in the past, but never any that seriously alienated a meaningful chunk of their customer base.
Sounds like the gaming equivalent of the play “Equus”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equus_(play)
I can see why some would shy away from it, but banning it is the sort of thing that will keep gaming from becoming a unique art form. 😟
It already is a unique art form. This is not defined by the commercial availability, and this game wouldn’t be the first art piece that understands controversy as part of its essence.
It was a child doing pony play, riding a naked adult man-horse. The dev claimed it was not sexual.
I don’t think gaming needs CSAM to be a “unique art form”, but you do you.
Y’all need to read what CSAM is. Questionable or objectionable art isn’t CSAM in the same sense that drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
Depiction isn’t harm, if it was damn near all literature would be in the same category.
Let’s not go down that slippery slope.
Books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume would be considered abuse material on such an asinine slope.
Y’all need to read what CSAM is. Questionable or objectionable art isn’t CSAM in the same sense that drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
it’s literally legally defined as CSAM in most western countries. and I probably wouldn’t be arguing otherwise, since it looks like the other dude who did that got all his posts deleted by the mod.
Read the plot summary of the play Equus linked above.
Like I say, this sounds like the gaming equivalent of Equus, which, when performed, involves a character supposed to be 17 doing exactly that.
The horses on stage are supposed to be “real” horses, but are performed by human actors. The male actor in these scenes is also typically nude.
NGL, it’s a HEAVY play to read and even heavier to watch, but it also won the 1975 Tony Award for best play…
Is it actually any good? I don’t really play horror, but it mostly just looks odd in the trailer.
Making the matter even more frustrating is the fact that Horses is apparently quite good—or at least, it accomplishes what it sets out to do. The content is decidedly uncomfortable but reviews and reactions on social media are largely positive
Horses is not low-effort, throwaway trash, but rather a game that genuinely seeks to provoke consideration and conversations.
From the article.
It’s horrific, not horror.
I am just gonna pretend like Epic and HB banned it only after see all this PR work they’re trying to do to save this god awful looking piece of “art.”
And just becsuse the comments here don’t seem to know the real root issue: The game originally featured a child protagonist, and that was what Valve was sent to review. They only changed the protag to an adult after the rejection and now they are throwing a hissy fit over their pedo game being banned.
No place for challenging art in video games. Books and movies have been pushing boundaries for millennia, but this new medium is way too effective at affecting people
-Valve, probably
It is available on other, quite popular, stores. GOG and itch.io are household names in PC gaming.
As long as that house exclusively uses Linux.
GOG and Itch sell mostly windows games.
I guess you wouldn’t be wrong to say that CSAM is challenging and pushes boundaries.
CSAM has nothing to do with this conversation. Are you lost?
Maybe look up why the game was rejected from Steam in the first place.
If that was true, why would the game removing fictional minors for a distinctly unsexual situation not remedy the rejection? Come on now
The distinction may seem like nitpicking but no, CSAM is a legally defined term of depictions of actual children being sexually abused.
This game does not feature any such content. Not just because there are no depictions of real children, but also because the fictional children depicted aren’t subjected to sexual abuse.
Valve’s language cites “sexual conduct” which in this case reportedly (I didn’t watch it myself) has been stretched to include nudity that is non-sexual in nature.
I get why Valve would err on the side of caution, but that TOS decision is no basis to turn around and make the legally relevant claim that the game features actual CSAM.
CSAM is literally why the game was banned from Steam.
Looks like it has triggered someone’s “we can’t be seen backing down!” reflex at Valve
What are you on about?
The game being banned for a misunderstood piece of placeholder concept art in a Steam approval preview build, which was both removed, and explained. Then Valve refusing to reconsider it and rejecting all attempts to clarify their objections.
if one of the builds for your game contains CSAM, then I don’t really give a shit what alternative builds you have, I don’t want to play anything made by you. kudos to Valve for not dealing with pedophiles.
I know. It’s not Valve’s fault the developer fucked up and gave them the wrong build to review. But that has literally nothing to do with this article unless you’re somehow trying to insinuate that Valve influenced other storefronts.
