Faced with the possibility of shutting down as a studio following Valve's decision to ban indie horror title Horses from being sold on its Steam platform, GOG, the digital distribution platform owned by CD Projekt Red dedicated to DRM-free games and digital preservation, has confirmed that the controversial title will have a place on its website when it is released on December 2nd.
In a statement shared with stores and posted on social media, GOG confirmed it was “proud” to host Horses, noting that players “should be able to choose the experiences that speak to them.”
We are proud to give HORSES a home on GOG, giving players another way to enjoy the game. We've always believed that players should be able to choose the experiences that speak to them.
To support the Santa Ragione studio in this difficult time, we've decided to launch pre-orders for HORSES today – grab yours and celebrate their creativity!
In addition to GOG, Horses will also be available on the Epic Games Store, Itch.io and the Humble Store, just not on Steam after Valve communicated a “final decision” to the Santa Ragione studio.
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As TheGamer reported earlier this week, Valve was sent an early version of the game back in 2023, and it apparently deemed the game too inappropriate to release on its popular PC platform, likely due to a now-edited sequence featuring “sexual conduct involving a minor.”
Originally in that 2023 building, the game sequence was constructed as:
“The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in the game the 'horses' are people wearing a horse mask) and gets to choose which one,” the developers explain. “What followed was an interactive dialogue sequence where the player leads, with a lead as if they were a horse, a naked adult woman with a young girl on her shoulders.
“The scene is not sexual in any way, but it is possible that the juxtaposition is what triggered the flag,” they continue. “We have since changed the character in the scene to be a twenty-something woman, both to avoid juxtaposition and more importantly because the dialogue delivered in that scene, which is about the social structure of the world of HORSES, works much better when delivered by an older character.”
For its part, Valve claimed that the ban was not “out of nowhere” or for “no reason” as many were making it out to be. In a statement shared with stores, Valve said it had “discussed” the matter at length with Santa Ragione.
“After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we provided feedback to the developer as to why we were unable to ship the game on Steam, in accordance with our onboarding rules and guidelines,” the statement read in part. “A short time later, the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed it at length and notified the developer of our final decision not to ship the game on Steam.”
With the game releasing on December 2nd, it's only a matter of time before everyone can see for themselves if Steam was justified in its decision, even after that specific scene was edited out.
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