CD Projekt’s PC game storefront GOG is getting behind indie game Horses after Valve banned it from Steam.
Horses is an indie first-person horror game with live-action sequences set in a horse farm. Over the course of 14 days, it “welcomes you into encounters that test your obedience, complicity, and restraint.” The player experiences “the farm’s unspeakable horrors through daily unique interactions,” as they must “withstand 14 days of spiraling dread as the reality of the farm unfolds.”
As IGN reported this week, Horses is currently preparing to launch on December 2 on the Epic Games Store, GOG, Itch.io, and the Humble Store, but not on Steam because Valve has banned the game from release on its platform.
Check out IGN’s original report for the details of the situation, which Italian developer Santa Ragione (Saturnalia, Wheels of Aurelia, MirrorMoon EP) has said leaves it with a “high risk” of closure, such is the PC gaming market dominance enjoyed by Steam. Valve has released a statement of its own, confirming its decision not to release Horses on Steam is “final.”
“We reviewed the game back in 2023,” Valve said. “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.”
Now, GOG has released a statement saying it is “proud” to give Horses a home on its platform, pushing pre-orders live, showcasing the game on its homepage, and alerting press and its followers across social media.
“We’re proud to give Horses a home on GOG, giving players another way to enjoy the game,” GOG said. “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 on Horses today — grab yours and celebrate their creativity!”
Valve still hasn’t explained why it refused to reconsider its position on Horses even after the developer tweaked the game. Speaking to IGN, Pietro Righi Riva of Santa Ragione urged game developers to stand up together to demand transparency from Steam.
“I know developers are understandably scared of voicing their complaints about Steam, but I hope we can collectively ask for better conditions to make our work more viable and more creatively free,” he said. “The current landscape is one where very few actors control the distribution of almost all games that are produced, and that should mean they are responsible not just for the commercial sustainability of the industry, but also for the growth of games as an artistic medium.”
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Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
