Horror game Horses sells 18,000 copies despite Steam's ban, but Santa Ragione are still closing down

Devs sign off with call to support other games "that are quietly banned, delisted, or trapped in indefinite review for unclear reasons"

Santa Ragione have announced that they’ve repaid all the money they borrowed to develop their Surrealist horror game Horses, despite being denied release on Steam and the Epic Games Store. It’s a better outcome than expected, given Steam’s centrality to PC gaming, and a strong demonstration of support for art that is prepared to disregard taboos and investigate something profoundly ugly. It’s also, however, not enough to keep Santa Ragione operational.

As warned when they broke their silence about the Steam ban last month, the developers are suspending operations and looking for other work. It’s possible they’ll get the band back together down the road, but this “will not be easy”.

According to Santa Ragione, Horses has sold 18,000 copies across all platforms since launch on GOG, Humble and Itch, generating around $65,000 in net revenue. Back in November, the developers told us that they had borrowed roughly $50,000 from friends to complete development, following the Steam ban, with the overall budget running to $100,000.

“After paying the royalties owed to Andrea Lucco Borlera, the author and creator of HORSES, these proceeds will be sufficient to repay the loans we took to finish development,” reads a press release, sent to RPS last night. “We are extremely grateful to players and to everyone who supported the release by sharing the game and amplifying what happened around it. Paying our debts is a success, and we are relieved.

“At the same time, this result is not enough to begin production on a new game,” it continues. “The money primarily covers obligations created by a prolonged end of development. If sales remain steady, we may be able to fund a new prototype in the future, but the team has had to, and will continue to, take other jobs and projects in the meantime. Reuniting everyone will not be easy, even if it is something we would love.”

Steam rejected a work-in-progress version of Horses in June 2023. The platform holder’s reasons for doing so remain unclear, but according to a Valve statement circulated by Santa Ragione themselves, the platform holder’s reviewers were concerned about depictions of "sexual conduct involving a minor". The developers subsequently altered the game to make all the characters visibly over 20 years old. They have also argued that while Horses does contain portrayals of sexual abuse of many kinds, it does not seek to arouse or glorify.

I’ve reviewed Horses, and while I haven’t played and therefore can’t speak for the WIP build from June 2023, this absolutely isn’t a work of child pornography. It’s a story of sexual oppression and brutalisation, which considers censorship as a form of sadism. The violence it depicts is portrayed as being technologically mediated via both an in-game projector and various self-referential pieces of design. It very clearly isn’t intended to be received as ‘unfiltered’ representation and endorsement. To claim otherwise is to misunderstand the game or, worse, twist it out of context.

In this week’s statement about sales, Santa Ragione write that the Steam ban precipitated “a prolonged scramble for funding, with debt, opportunity cost, and team members taking other work”. In other words, the studio had already begun to fragment long before Santa Ragione went public about Valve’s decision.

The developers also note that while Horses has been a relative hit at launch, the game will miss out on the long-term revenue from Steam’s many sales and bundle offers. “Steam’s economics rely heavily on multi-year long tail sales and, for our past projects, on Steam key distribution through bundles, which has also lately been restricted for low-selling titles,” they write. “These structural differences are why a strong two week result on smaller storefronts does not tell us what a full Steam release could have looked like.”

I’m interested to hear more about the key distribution situation. Santa Ragoine have previously criticised Valve for declining to give them Steam keys for a "great bundle opportunity" featuring Saturnalia, their previous well-regarded horror game.

The developers conclude by refocussing attention on Valve’s role as de facto industry regulator and censor, given the size of its share of the PC gaming market. They write that stronger-than-expected sales of Horses “should not distract from the broader issue at stake: the need for clearer rules, transparent processes, and meaningful accountability from near monopolistic distribution platforms and the systems they enforce.

“For every case like HORSES that becomes visible, there are many more games that are quietly banned, delisted, or trapped in indefinite review for unclear reasons, with developers too worried about retaliation or future approval to speak publicly,” the statement concludes.

To continue the theme from that closing sentence, the news that Steam had banned Horses came following a wider crackdown on adult games across both Valve’s platform and indie storefront Itch.io. This summer, Valve and Itch altered their submission terms to give international payment processing networks a say over the definition of acceptable adult material.

The payment networks themselves appear to have tightened their rules under pressure from anti-misogyny groups and anti-pornography activists with ultra-conservative leanings. There is a counter-campaign underway to force the payment networks to reverse policy, organised by community figures such as journalist and Youtuber Ana Valens. We will likely have more reporting on the subject next year.

Update: This article's headline originally stated that Horses had "broken even", because I am a goof who doesn't understand words. It has been edited.