Valve Responds As Indie Horror Studio Accuses Steam Of 'censorship'...

Valve told Santa Ragione its game featured child exploitation. The studio says otherwise.

Update: Reached for comment, Valve replied that its content review team "extensively" discussed in 2023 whether to reconsider its refusal to list Horses for sale on Steam, but ultimately held its decision. Valve's full statement reads:

We reviewed the game back in 2023. At that time, the developer indicated with their release date in Steamworks that they planned to release a few months later. Based on content in the store page, we told the developer we would need to review the build itself. This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines. After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines. A short while later the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed that extensively and communicated to the developer our final decision that we were not going to ship the game on Steam.

While Valve's statement doesn't provide much additional detail about its decision making, it explains why Santa Ragione was asked to provide a playable build for Horses before its store listing could be approved, which isn't typically required of developers until closer to their application's launch.Original story follows.

On December 2, Italian game dev studio Santa Ragione will release Horses, a first-person horror adventure telling a story of "the burden of familial trauma and puritan values, the dynamics of totalitarian power, and the ethics of personal responsibility," using what the studio calls "grotesque, subversive imagery" of a ranch where nude human beings in horse masks are treated as animal livestock.

Prerelease demos of Horses have been honored at IndieCade, Day of the Devs, SXSW Sydney showcases, and SFMOMA exhibitions. But while it'll be available for $5 on Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch.io, and the Humble Store for $5, Santa Ragione says the launch of Horses will leave the studio at risk of closing—because in June 2023, after submitting the game for listing on Steam, Santa Ragione received an email from Valve saying Horses was banned from Steam for featuring "content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor."

In a lengthy FAQ page about the Horses launch, Santa Ragione shares the fu

Source: PC Gamer