Steam And Epic’s Ban Of Horses Is A Grim Sign Of The Times
An artistic triumph could be its developer’s last game.
There are good, moral ideas that are worth being expressed and bad, immoral ideas that are worth being punished for. That’s the philosophy underpinning countless forms of oppression and intolerance, from casual expressions of transphobia and racism to systemic persecution and censorship. Developer Santa Ragione’s Horses explores the psychology of those who perpetuate oppression, putting you in the shoes of a young man hired to help manage a farm full of enslaved people forced to wear horse masks — and it’s been banned from Steam and the Epic Games Store as a result, putting its studio’s future in jeopardy.
The roughly three-hour Horses takes place over two weeks, as young Anselmo is hired as a farmhand at the end of a summer vacation. He’s greeted by the cheerful but unnerving owner of the farm, who takes a liking to Anselmo and assures him that he’ll enjoy the two-week gig. But almost immediately, things take a dark turn. Anselmo is taken to see the “horses,” who turn out to be human beings, stripped naked and forced to wear horse masks, crammed into a tiny enclosure together. With a constantly traumatized look on his face, Anselmo goes about his duties, feeding the horses and tending to a vegetable garden, as events become more shocking and surreal.
Horses is a deeply unsettling game about abuses of power, and it could be the developer’s last work due to censorship from Steam and Epic Games.
The largest PC game storefront in existence, Steam, recently had the biggest scandal in its history when it blacklisted large swaths of games with vaguely defined “inappropriate” content at the behest of payment processors, spurred on by hardcore conservative activists. And just before the release of Horses, Santa Ragione revealed that its game, too, had been banned from Steam, but this time, the decision came directly from owner Valve. And since the vast majority of PC players use Steam to buy games, the developer of incredible games like Saturnalia and Mediterranea Inferno says it will almost certainly be forced to close.
“Steam’s policy grants broad discretion to refuse titles without providing detailed explanations,” Santa Ragione wrote in a public statement. “In our case, they simply stated they could not legally distribute Horses, without clarifying why. When we asked for an official explanation that we could share publicly, we were redirected to Steam’s general Onboarding Documentation and its ‘What you shouldn’t publish on Steam’ section, which cites catch-all phrases such as ‘content that is patently offensive or intended to shock or disgust viewers.’”
The disturbing content of Horses does nothing to justify its ban.
To be clear, there’s plenty about Horses that’s shocking and disgusting, and you should take note of its content warning (which includes “physical violence, psychological abuse, gory imagery, depictions of slavery, physical and psychological torture, domestic abuse, sexual assault, suicide, and misogyny”) before playing. But it’s one thing for players to decide for themselves whether to engage with a game with upsetting content and an entirely different one for a distributor to decide that the game can’t be purchased at all.
Horses is not fun to play, or even comfortable. Day by day, Anselmo is made to witness, and eventually participate in, increasingly dehumanizing acts against the farm’s slaves. A cheery little list of tasks guides you through your day, with mundane instructions like “wash the horses,” that give no hint at the horror that’s actually taking place. As Anselmo and the farmer ride on the backs of the captives and force them to perform tricks, a counter appears in the screen’s corner to track your progress, turning the game’s own interface into an instrument of oppression.
Horses forces players to behave in horrible ways for dramatic effect.
What Horses offers in place of fun is a subversion of gaming’s interactivity that asks the question, what does it feel like to be complicit? As Anselmo, you’re never given a choice of whether you want to continue with the horrific things that are being asked of you. You’re never the victim of violence, but the threat of it is always there, with the farmer praising you for helping him torture his “horses” and flipping to extreme anger any time you show the slightest hesitation. Rather than leaving you to make your own choices as Anselmo, Horses examines the ways that the social forces of religion and patriarchy confine the freedom of those they task with upholding them just as they inflict horrors on those they see as inferior.
Again and again, Horses makes it clear that it’s not just a game that wants to unnerve you. The game is presented in black and white, with all of its nudity covered in pixelated mosaics, as if to give you a layer of separation from what you’re seeing, making it clear that it’s meant for contemplation, not titillation. The farmer isn’t the only one responsible for keeping his “horses” captive, and no one involved is shy about telling you exactly why they’re doing this — “immoral behavior” deserves to be punished, and those who act that way are more animal than human.
Horses is a critique of oppressive power structures being targeted by powerful game distributors.
It’s the rationale behind countless atrocities throughout history, and an idea that’s made a grim resurgence around the world in recent years. I felt sick to my stomach throughout Horses, and not just because what it’s directly depicting is so unsettling. As a trans woman, I’m acutely aware that the arguments Horses’ antagonists use to justify their actions are the same used to persecute my own community. In the world of Horses, I would undoubtedly be forced into a mask.
While Steam’s ban on Horses came to light a week before its release, Epic banned the game less than a day before its launch. Both refuse to give a straight answer about why they’re blocking Horses’ release, but both Valve and Epic, the groups pressuring payment processors, and even governments justify their actions based on unclear language that allows the label “obscene” to be applied to anything from hate speech to mere depictions of people like me. In other words, if these companies declare that a developer doesn’t meet their standard of moral behavior, then they have no obligation to treat them as human.
If a game like Horses, which rebukes oppression at every turn, cannot be distributed on gaming’s biggest storefronts, then those storefronts stand in direct opposition to the medium’s progress. I can’t tell you that you’ll have a good time playing Horses, but I can tell you that it’s one of the most impactful games I’ve played this year, and one that deserves to be seen, no matter what moralistic game sellers say.
