Horses, Horror, and Storefront Power: GOG vs Steam

The indie horror game Horses has become the center of a heated debate about who gets to decide what players can experience. After Valve refused to distribute the game on Steam, rival storefront GOG publicly embraced it, framing the decision as a stand for player choice and creative freedom. The clash exposes deeper tensions around platform power, opaque content policies, and the precarious reality of small studios that depend on major digital stores to survive.

What Is Horses and Why Is It Controversial?

Horses is a first-person horror title developed by Italian indie studio Santa Ragione. The game blends traditional gameplay with live-action footage and follows a college student spending a summer on a remote farm. Over time, an unsettling mix of psychological, physical, and social horror emerges, with sequences designed to disturb rather than simply shock.

According to reporting from Engadget and Game Developer, Valve’s internal review flagged the game for content the company believes crosses a line, pointing to material that in its judgment suggests sexual conduct involving a minor and other extreme depictions of abuse and violence.¹² While the exact scenes at issue have not been published in detail, the themes themselves are clear:

• Physical and psychological abuse
• Gory imagery, including mutilation and blood
• Depictions of slavery and coercion
• Sexual assault and sexualized violence
• Relentless, oppressive horror focused on human suffering

Those elements, combined with the age and vulnerability of some of the characters, triggered Valve’s content review system. Where Steam sees unacceptable risk and policy violations, GOG and other storefronts see difficult but legitimate horror storytelling that adults should be free to choose.

Valve’s Decision: Why Steam Blocked Horses

Steam dominates the PC gaming market, accounting for a vast share of digital sales for many studios. That makes Valve’s decision to block a title as significant financially as it is symbolically. In communication shared by Santa Ragione, Valve’s content review team told the developer that Steam would not distribute Horses because it features themes, imagery, or descriptions that Steam declines to host.²

In later statements to press, Valve indicated that some store page elements raised serious concerns, and a subsequent build review confirmed its decision. The company referenced its rules against sexual content involving minors or content that appears to portray minors in sexual situations, even if fictional, suggesting Horses fell within that prohibited zone.¹ In effect, Valve is invoking a safety and legality framework, even though it does not publish the precise internal thresholds for what crosses the line.

Steam’s Balancing Act: Openness vs. Restriction

Valve’s public stance on content over the last decade has been to err on the side of openness while maintaining hard limits for certain categories. Based on its developer documentation and past enforcement, Steam typically restricts:

• Content that appears to sexualize minors (real or fictional)
• Non-consensual sexual content
• Material that could be considered illegal in key jurisdictions where the store operates
• Extremely graphic real-world hate speech or calls to violence

Outside these areas, the store carries everything from explicit horror and erotic visual novels to violent shooters and disturbing psychological thrillers. The tension arises because the company applies these rules behind closed doors, and decisions are communicated to developers with limited transparency.

From Valve’s perspective, this approach reduces legal risk, protects the company’s brand, and allows some flexibility in edge cases. From the developer’s point of view, it can feel arbitrary and opaque, especially when months or years of work hinge on an email from a largely anonymous review team.

GOG’s Response: A Public Stand for Player Choice

GOG, the PC storefront owned by CD Projekt, took a very different approach. The platform announced that it will host Horses, aligning itself openly with the game’s developers. In doing so, GOG emphasized two key ideas:

• Player autonomy: Adults should be able to decide what type of content they want to engage with, including challenging and disturbing horror.
• Creative freedom: Developers should have room to explore difficult themes, provided they remain within the bounds of law.

GOG’s message, echoed in its marketing and statements to press, effectively casts the store as a more permissive, art-friendly alternative to Steam. It positions Horses not merely as a product but as a test case in a broader argument about what digital storefronts ought to allow.

Other Stores Step In

GOG isn’t alone in backing the game. Santa Ragione has confirmed that Horses is scheduled to release on:

• Epic Games Store
• GOG
• itch.io
• Humble Store

Each of these platforms has its own review processes and policies, yet none has followed Valve in banning the game. The situation highlights a growing divergence in how major PC storefronts interpret risk and responsibility around controversial content.

The Human Cost: An Indie Studio on the Brink

Beyond abstract debates about policy lies a more immediate problem: the survival of Santa Ragione. In statements to press, the studio has said that being locked out of Steam puts the company at serious risk of closure.¹ For a small team, the financial impact of losing access to Steam’s user base can be devastating.

There are structural reasons for this vulnerability. The European Commission’s research on app ecosystems has shown that distribution platforms with dominant market share have outsized influence over which products succeed or fail, and developers frequently report feeling dependent on those platforms’ policies and algorithms.³ PC gaming is no different: while alternatives exist, none rival Steam’s scale or visibility.

For Santa Ragione, the stakes are straightforward:

• Reduced reach: Many PC players default to buying on Steam; some never check other stores.
• Discoverability loss: Steam’s recommendation and library features drive ongoing visibility and long-tail sales.
• Revenue cliff: Even if other stores perform well, they are unlikely to fully compensate for the absent Steam audience.

This is why GOG’s public backing matters. It not only gives the game a prominent home but sends a signal to players who might otherwise never investigate an off-Steam release.

Is This Censorship, Safety, or Both?

Reactions to the Horses case split along familiar lines. Some argue that Valve’s decision amounts to de facto censorship: a dominant platform is preventing adults from accessing a piece of art because it disapproves of its content. Others insist that platform holders have both the right and the obligation to say no to material that appears to sexualize minors or depict extreme abuse in provocative ways.

Understanding Platform Responsibility

Streaming services, social networks, and app stores have all faced similar dilemmas. Regulators and researchers increasingly frame platform responsibility around three overlapping duties:⁴⁵

• Legal compliance: Ensuring content does not violate national or international law, including child protection and obscenity rules.
• Risk mitigation: Reducing the chance that harmful content is algorithmically amplified or easily accessible to minors.
• User rights and expression: Avoiding overbroad takedowns that unduly restrict lawful expression or access to information.

Games occupy a tricky space in this framework. They are interactive and often more immersive than linear media, which can amplify their impact on players. Yet they are also widely recognized as expressive works. For highly disturbing horror games like Horses, the line between responsible curation and overreach is hard to draw.

How Horses Fits into Horror’s Long History of Pushing Limits

Horror has always wrestled with where to draw the line between depiction and exploitation. From banned novels and controversial films to video games criticized for graphic violence, creators repeatedly push into territories that challenge social comfort and legal boundaries.

In film, landmark debates over censorship and classification helped create rating systems that allow adults to watch extremely disturbing content while imposing age-based restrictions. The same logic is slowly extending to games; for example, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) in North America and PEGI in Europe classify games by age suitability and content descriptors.⁶ However, storefronts are not legally obliged to accept every rated game, and platform policies can be stricter than rating boards.

Horses sits squarely in this heritage of boundary-pushing horror. It uses live-action sequences and grounded scenarios to evoke real-world abuse and trauma, making the experience feel less abstract than, say, battling monsters or ghosts. Supporters see this as a valid artistic choice. Critics see it as crossing a moral or ethical line, particularly in relation to how younger characters are portrayed.

What the Dispute Reveals About Storefront Power

The story of Horses is not just about one game; it is a case study in how much power digital storefronts wield over the medium as a whole. When a single platform can effectively remove a game from the mainstream marketplace, several issues come into focus:

• Concentrated market power: A few companies decide what reaches mass audiences, shaping the cultural landscape of games.
• Opaque enforcement: Developers often learn about policy boundaries only when they cross them.
• Economic fragility: Small studios lack the buffers and diversification that large publishers enjoy.
• Fragmented standards: Different stores applying different rules can lead to confusion for both creators and players.

At the same time, the presence of alternative platforms like GOG, Epic, and itch.io demonstrates that storeholders do not always move in lockstep. For creators of challenging or controversial works, those alternatives are becoming increasingly important.

How Players Can Respond

For players, the Horses situation is a reminder that where you buy your games matters. If you want a marketplace that supports experimental, uncomfortable, or niche titles, it may require stepping outside Steam’s ecosystem and supporting games on other storefronts.

Practical steps players can take include:

• Following developers directly: Subscribe to studio newsletters and social channels so you know where their games are actually available.
• Checking multiple stores: When a title is missing from Steam, look for it on GOG, Epic, itch.io, or Humble.
• Leaving constructive feedback: Whether you agree or disagree with a platform’s decision, measured feedback is more likely to be heard than outrage.
• Supporting risk-takers: If you value creative risk-taking in horror or other genres, buying those games on their chosen platforms sends a clear signal.

None of this guarantees that a controversial game will thrive, but it does help diversify where value flows in the PC ecosystem.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Horses illegal in any way?

There is no public indication that Horses violates criminal law in the jurisdictions where it is being sold. The dispute is about platform policies, not a court ruling. Each storefront independently assesses legal risk, and GOG, Epic, itch.io, and Humble have all chosen to distribute the game.

Why did Steam ban Horses when other stores accepted it?

Valve’s internal review concluded that certain themes and imagery in Horses conflict with its content rules, particularly around sexual material involving minors or characters that could be perceived as minors.¹ Other stores apply different thresholds and have judged the game acceptable for adult audiences.

Does GOG allow any content as long as it is legal?

No. While GOG markets itself as pro-choice and pro-preservation, it still curates its catalog and may decline games it considers low quality, scam-like, or otherwise inappropriate. Its decision to host Horses reflects a belief that the game’s disturbing content is legitimate horror, not prohibited material.

Could Valve reverse its decision in the future?

In theory, yes. Valve has reversed content decisions in the past when additional context or changes to a game altered its assessment. However, in this case, the company has indicated that it extensively reviewed the title and reaffirmed its refusal, so a reversal would likely require significant changes to the game or a shift in policy.

What does this mean for future controversial games?

The Horses case will likely become a reference point for other developers working with difficult themes. Studios may be more cautious when pitching such games to Steam, or they may focus on alternative storefronts from the outset. Conversely, stores like GOG may lean more into their role as havens for boundary-pushing titles, using these controversies to differentiate themselves.