After two years of dispute with Valve, Italian prestige indie Santa Ragione’s next game Horses cannot come out on Steam. The studio says it will wind down operations after the release on other platforms, facing closure.
Santa Ragione, indie studio from Italy with a massive track record of more than ten years of games such as Saturnalia and Wheels of Aurelia, will not be able to release their next game, an explicit horror title called Horse, through Steam. In an FAQ, the studio says that after a more than two year dispute with Valve over the content of the game, the Steam company has definitely banned the game from their storefront without giving exact reasons. Santa Ragione will release the game on competing storefronts such as Epic, GOG and itch, but says that without the reach of Steam, they do not anticipate enough sales to keep the studio going. After the release on 2 December, the studio will go on hiatus, with a risk of complete closure.
The studio explains: "We initially invested about $50,000 to develop Horses after signing the game with its creator, Andrea Lucco Borlera. We hoped to cover these costs with sales of our previous game, Saturnalia, which unfortunately sold far less than we expected. Nevertheless, we had lined up a great bundle opportunity for that game, which was denied because Valve refused to give us Steam keys. Around the same time, we were informed that HORSES had been banned and would not release on Steam, which completely erased our ability to find an external supporting publisher or partner to fund the rest of the game, as no one in the industry considers an indie game that cannot be released on Steam to be viable. After two years of seeking these funds through traditional venues while trying to get the game unbanned, we had to seek private funding from friends to complete development, which puts us in a completely unsustainable financial situation unless the game somehow recoups its development costs."
Valve has commented to GameDeveloper about the ban and confirmed that Horses will indeed not be released on Steam due to conflicts with Valve’s own onboarding rules and guidelines, without giving the specific reason. Santa Ragione claims that the studio has not been told the reason as well, and had been in active contact with Valve to resolve issues since 2023 before the announcement of the ban.
While this banning feels reminiscent of the adult game bans throughout several storefronts, Steam among them, the situation is quite different. In this case, Valve’s decision is happening assuredly without pressure from outside sources such as payment processors or right-wing lobby organisations. Without a definitive statement from Valve about the exact reasons, it is impossible to pin down if Horses’ non-listing is part of a new, stricter guideline around explicitly violent content, a case of drawn-out miscommunication or something entirely else. It seems, however, doubtful that Valve would implement stronger guidelines to curb the horror sector of their storefront, a game genre that drives significant engagement in the attention economy revolving around streamers that regularly bring horror titles into massive spotlight.
