The Maker Of Banned Indie Game Horses Claims Epic Is Misleading Players

It’s been months since Epic Games removed Horses from its PC storefront and the two sides are still feuding about what exactly took place. Developer Santa Ragione claims it was ghosted by Epic while the Fortnite maker claims it’s been transparent throughout the process. Now Santa Ragione’s co-founder and studio director, Pietro Righi Riva, has responded to the response to the response, claiming Epic Games’ “vague and semi-automated statements” provided little in the way of meaningful feedback about why Horses was removed from the storefront.

This latest chapter in the ongoing censorship fight began with Game File’s February 5 interview with Epic Games, in which it asked VP Steve Allison why the game was taken down. “My understanding is the trust and safety team thought [Horses] was worth taking a fresh look, and they determined that it indeed was against our policies on a couple fronts,” Allison said. “And so, the call came late—and we love that studio; we did their previous game as a short exclusive—but because that [trust and safety] team, that’s their job and that is, if you do the letter of the law on our policies, it is what it is.”

For context, Epic Games’ content ratings guidelines state that games “with Adults Only (AO) ratings cannot be distributed on the Epic Games Store.” They do make an exception for games that only carry AO ratings “because they use blockchain, NFT, or cryptocurrency technology.” Horses is also not available through Steam for similar reasoning, but can be purchased on GoG and itch.io. 

On February 7, Santa Ragione rejected Allison’s claim in a post on Bluesky. “Epic made provably incorrect statements about the game’s content, refused to provide details supporting their claims, and has not shared their claimed AO IARC certificate, which normally includes a link for the developer to appeal. They do not ‘love that studio’, they have effectively ghosted us,” stated Santa Ragione.

Today, Epic Games followed up on Santa Ragione’s post in a statement to several publications, including IGN and PC Gamer. “Our team played the game and found it violated the Epic Games Store’s Content Guidelines, specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies,” communications manager Brian Sharon said.

“We did a secondary check by filling out the ratings questionnaire for the game ourselves and the content got an Adults Only (AO) rating – which we do not allow on the Store. Because this wasn’t an official submission, we do not have a certificate to share with the team. We did give the developers context around the policies they violated. When they appealed, we reviewed the content again, and let them know the decision was appropriately applied and will remain in place.”

A cloud of confusion still hangs over Horses‘ last-minute rejection

Kotaku reached out to Santa Ragione for clarification regarding the “incorrect statements” they alluded to in their initial Bluesky post. “On Dec 1, 24 hours before release, Epic sent us what looked like an automated notice saying that they were unable to distribute Horses on the Epic Games Store because their review found violations of the Epic Games Store Content Guidelines, specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies,” replied Pietro Righi Riva. “They went on to specify that their policies prohibit content which ‘contains explicit or frequent depictions of sexual behavior or not appropriately labeled, rated, or age-gated,’ and content that promotes abuse and animal abuse.”

Riva further explained that they responded to Epic Games’ first notice to appeal within “28 minutes,” on the basis that “all nudity in the game is completely censored via pixelation” and that “the content presented does not in any way promote abuse and animal abuse.” After Epic Games’ second review of Horses, Riva told us that “No additional information or context was ever provided. We emailed them twice since to plead for a resubmission and find a solution but never received a reply.”

“I do not think that those two vague and semi-automated statements would qualify as ‘contacting us twice.’ Their initial message suggested there was a path to ‘make updates to our product to ensure compliance’ but never explained what that would entail or what specifically needed change in the first place,” Riva concluded.

Horses has received a range of reviews since it launched, but one thing many critics seems to agree on is that there is nothing in the game nearly as scandalous as Epic and Valve banning it would imply. Adding to the confusion and skepticism is that PC gaming storefronts have been under extra pressure recently from payment processers at the behest of pro-censorship activists to crackdown on NSFW content. For all the controversy, Epic and other storefronts still haven’t made it clear precisely what they found so objectionable about the content in Horses.