Responding to current statements by Epic Recreation Retailer VP and normal supervisor Steve Allison in a Recreation File interview, indie writer Santa Ragione has once more publicly criticized EGS’ dealing with of Horses, a controversial artwork sport that was delisted from each the Epic and Steam storefronts—Santa Ragione has argued in each circumstances that the storefronts make use of uneven requirements with grownup video games, and that they failed to obviously talk the reasoning behind Horses’ removing.
Talking to Recreation File, Allison stated that “[Santa Ragione] went by way of the self-publishing course of and [Horses] went by way of,” referring to how the studio crammed out an Worldwide Age Score Coalition (IARC) kind to find out it had an M-rating—and thus, was match for EGS—resulting in its preliminary itemizing on the platform.
Epic made provably incorrect statements in regards to the sport’s content material, refused to supply particulars supporting their claims, and has not shared their claimed AO IARC certificates, which usually features a hyperlink for the developer to attraction. They don’t ‘love that studio’, they’ve successfully ghosted us
— @santaragione.com (@santaragione.com.bsky.social) 2026-02-09T02:45:01.874Z
“My understanding is the belief and security staff thought [Horses] was value taking a contemporary look, and so they decided that it certainly was towards our insurance policies on a pair fronts,” stated Allison. Epic carried out its personal IARC evaluation of Horses and judged it to be Grownup’s Solely (AO), the ESRB’s X-rated kiss of loss of life, resulting in the sport’s removing from the Epic Retailer a day earlier than launch.
“And so, the decision got here late—and we love that studio; we did their earlier sport as a brief unique—however as a result of that [trust and safety] staff, that’s their job and that’s, in case you do the letter of the legislation on our insurance policies, it’s what it’s.”
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Epic instructed Santa Ragione that it doesn’t carry AO video games as a matter of coverage, with an exception “for merchandise in circumstances the place an AO ranking was utilized solely as a result of utilization of blockchain or NFT know-how.”
Allison instructed Recreation File that the second take a look at Horses was prompted by information and dialogue in regards to the sport near launch. Whereas Horses had been delisted from Steam for 2 years, Summer time 2025 noticed a sequence of excessive profile cases the place conservative activist teams (through fee processors like Visa and Mastercard) pressured Steam and itch.io to take away grownup content material.
This, in flip, introduced renewed consideration to Horses’ delisting from Steam, notably within the face of far more high-profile video games on the platform with reasonable, uncensored full-frontal nudity like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, equally disturbing subject material like Concern and Starvation, or each, just like the Outlast sequence.
Horses portrays a surreal “farm” in rural Italy the place hypnotized, nude human beings in horse masks are handled as livestock and dominated by a sadistic overseer. Horses has been in comparison with Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious voyage into the fascist id.
The second half of the sport, particularly, portrays or implies brutal acts of sexual violence, however all the time visually censored—the “horses,” in addition to the horrible issues that occur to them, are all obscured with a pixellation impact.
Santa Ragione took to Bluesky to dispute Allison’s framing of those occasions. “Epic made provably incorrect statements in regards to the sport’s content material, refused to supply particulars supporting their claims, and has not shared their claimed AO IARC certificates, which usually features a hyperlink for the developer to attraction,” the studio wrote. “They don’t ‘love that studio’, they’ve successfully ghosted us.”
Santa Ragione additionally factors to the existence of unredacted longplays of Horses on YouTube and Twitch as proof the AO ranking was misapplied by Epic—each platforms have made information prior to now for aggressive moderation of speech and specific content material. Horses additionally stays accessible for buy on each GOG and the Humble Retailer.
“Horses is fascinating for different causes too, and I hope that the unlucky scenario of its launch will not cease us from contemplating what the sport is definitely doing, whether or not it really works, and the place it matches in with the dialog of the broader texts it attracts inspiration from,” PC Gamer contributor Maddi Chilton concluded in a evaluation of the sport final December.
“Regardless of its shortfalls, Horses is a real try and strategy, by way of videogames, the areas that movie and literature take as a right, and we should not overlook that simply because Steam was squeamish.”
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