{"id":328494,"date":"2025-12-03T18:47:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T18:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/328494\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T18:47:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T18:47:07","slug":"epic-bans-indie-game-horses-from-its-storefront-24-hours-before-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/328494\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic bans indie game Horses from its storefront 24 hours before release"},"content":{"rendered":"

Indie studio Santa Ragione is facing more strife after claiming its latest game has been blocked on another major storefront. The developer previously said it was at risk of closure<\/a> after Valve banned Horses from Steam, noting that it would be very difficult to recoup its investment without access to the world\u2019s largest PC gaming storefront. The situation became more dire this week after Epic Games blocked Horses as well.<\/p>\n

Santa Ragione said Epic notified the studio of its decision just 24 hours before the game was released on Tuesday, despite approving Horses for sale on the Epic Games Store weeks earlier. \u201cOnce again, no specific indication of problematic content in the game was given, only broad and demonstrably incorrect claims that it violated their content guidelines,\u201d the studio wrote in an FAQ<\/a>. \u201cOur appeal was denied twelve hours later without further explanation.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to an email from Epic that Santa Ragione shared, the company banned Horses from its store due to violations of its inappropriate content and hateful or abusive content policies, the latter of which \u201cprohibits content that promotes abuse and animal abuse.\u201d It also determined that Horses had received an adults-only rating, and such games aren\u2019t allowed on its store. Engadget has contacted Epic for comment.<\/p>\n

Horses is a horror game about a college student who works on a farm during the summer. The farm\u2019s so-called horses are actually nude human adults who wear equine masks and live as horses.<\/p>\n

Santa Ragione said that, in its appeal to Epic, it pointed out that Horses is a \u201cstrong critique of violence and abuse in general\u201d and that it doesn\u2019t promote any kind of abuse. It claimed that there are no \u201cexplicit or frequent depictions of sexual behavior,\u201d as nudity is pixelated and although the three-hour game has four \u201csexual sequences,\u201d these are brief and censored, with two mainly taking place off-camera. However, Santa Ragione said Epic stuck by its decision to block the game from its store.<\/p>\n

With Horses being banned from Steam and the Epic Games Store, that leaves GOG<\/a> (where it\u2019s currently at the top of the bestsellers chart) and Itch<\/a>.io<\/a> as the only storefronts on which the $5 game is available as Santa Ragione tries to recoup the $100,000 or so it spent on development. Horses was supposed to have been available via the Humble Store as well but, as Gamespot<\/a> notes, the URL for the list<\/a>ing<\/a> now redirects to the store\u2019s homepage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indie studio Santa Ragione is facing more strife after claiming its latest game has been blocked on another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[145589,166940,166941,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-328494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-epic-games","9":"tag-horses-for-sale","10":"tag-santa-ragione","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}