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content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor
I'm assuming they don't mean a suggestive camera pan, but actually something problematic on screen, in which case, I totally support the ban. Devs were given the opportunity to change it, and they said no. Ban away imho. The fact that this is considered controversial is pretty disturbing to me.
It was a child doing pony play, riding a naked adult man-horse. The dev claimed it was not sexual.
This was removed later but it's the build you send for review that gets reviewed. Other stores got a later version, hence why it passed on those.
Dev was not given a chance to remove it as it turns out steam has a policy that anything that resembles CSAM gets denied permanently.
I haven't heard about the details, what's your source on that?
As far as I recall, the developer said he didn't know the actual reason for the ban.
Some previous article which contained valve's response, and a description of the scene. I didn't find it immediately, but I'll check again.
What’s CSAM?
Child Sexual Abuse Material. Legalese for child porn and adjacent things.
I also was wondering why, it's always been called CP and then recently they changed acronym 🤷
Calling it "porn" makes it sound more legitimate and less like the heinous abuse that it really is.
Like the other user said, porn implies some level of consent which children cannot give. Calling it csam ensures there's no confusion about it being abuse.
Pretty sure it's child sexual abuse material
I'm almost thru the game and I did not notice any sexual conducts with minors
EDIT: Btw. Something that I thought was only done for screenshots, but the nudity in-game is censored/pixelated.
The devs were not told what needed to change even after asking, so they tried to remove anything that they suspected could be taken the wrong way, asked for reconsideration or clarification, but receive no response.
This is false.
They submitted to steam, who asked for a preliminary build of the game (one would assume due to concerns about the content). The build provided included a small child reading a naked man like a horse.
Steam denied the game based on the inclusion of CSAM, and advised the devs directly of this decision in what the devs call “an automated email”, as if steam is out there personally hand writing rejection letters for every failed game out there.
The devs claim to have changed the scene, but it seems that Steam has a zero-tolerance policy on games that feature CSAM. And, I mean, Fair.
It seems a stretch to call (at least as far as I understand it), a naked (fictional) underage character riding a horse CSAM? Sure, it's definitely not in good taste, but... CSAM?
CSAM is child abuse, there are no children here. Is there a clear line between someone drawing and actual real child abuse? Because, IMHO, there definitely should be.
I agree that steam shouldn't allow such content, we don't want it, but I definitely disagree with the semantics here.
Or am I missing something obvious??
You are, it wasn't a horse in the build they sent to Steam, it was a naked man. If you have a naked girl on a horse I think that qualifies too, you have an underage character that's naked.
Steam was the first major storefront to refuse to carry Horses, a first-person psychological horror adventure about "the burden of familial trauma and puritan values, the dynamics of totalitarian power, and the ethics of personal responsibility" set on a ranch where nude human beings in horse masks are treated as livestock.
Publisher Santa Ragione said in November that Valve declined to carry Horses because it contained "content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor." Santa Ragione disputed that characterization, but an appeal was rejected and the ban stands.
Seems like it's treading a very fine line...
Based solely off the trailer I can see how a big American storefront would err on the side of caution here. There is very little to gain from carrying a game decidedly built with controversy in mind, but a lot to loose.
With the publicity around it and sales still possible through alternative stores maybe things will turn out alright for the developer in the end. "Banned" media is always in demand, after all.
Unless it unexpectedly sells gangbusters, the dev says they're likely to shut down as not having the massive steam audience to sell to won't net them enough to continue. And people are stupidly loyal to valve for some reason.
That's because Valve is privately owned and this has largely resisted the enshittification that largely plagues public companies and private equity frims.
It very well could be true, but the dev also seemed full of shit in the first interview I saw, pretending that he had no clue why it was banned.
They'd be as well carrying on. Its in a pretty unique position as being a game that people are talking about before its even finished, which is pretty uncommon for most titles, and can be "the game they tried to ban" which did wonders for Manhunt, GTA and Postal.
Valve is pretty upfront about being a business first and foremost. Their customers are loyal because they consistently provide high value at reasonable prices, even though they are in a dominating position in the market. They've taken unpopular decisions in the past, but never any that seriously alienated a meaningful chunk of their customer base.
Wait, I thought this game was a depiction of what we subject horses to, using a horror lens to drive home the point? I've never heard of something less sexy?
My understanding is that there was a scene where a young girl rides a naked man/woman around. Apparently it has since been changed to make the child older, but... I can perfectly understand why anyone would be hesitant to accept such a game based on that description alone. Even if it's not intended to be sexual, the developers were certainly pushing the line
The game company seems to have thought that they could drum up sales on other platforms by making this a media thing. Based on the additional platforms pulling out, it might have backfired. They could have let their little horse-porn game quietly release on every platform but Steam and made enough to get by. Instead they drew attention to themselves.
Did it not work tho? This was my first itch.io purchase ever
Not arguing the effectiveness of drumming up drama to sell your game, but they have also lost the accessibility of three major platforms in doing so.
Good on you for dismissing years of work from a group of people as a "little horse-porn game".
Is it actually any good? I don't really play horror, but it mostly just looks odd in the trailer.
Making the matter even more frustrating is the fact that Horses is apparently quite good—or at least, it accomplishes what it sets out to do. The content is decidedly uncomfortable but reviews and reactions on social media are largely positive
Horses is not low-effort, throwaway trash, but rather a game that genuinely seeks to provoke consideration and conversations.
From the article.
It’s horrific, not horror.
Assuming the content is merely controversial and not objectionable (i.e. exploitative), it seems there may be room for an art-centric game store front.
Ironically, I'm betting it's nowhere near as exploitative as the monetization practices of virtually every AAA release these days.
Sounds like the gaming equivalent of the play "Equus".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equus_(play)
I can see why some would shy away from it, but banning it is the sort of thing that will keep gaming from becoming a unique art form. 😟
It already is a unique art form. This is not defined by the commercial availability, and this game wouldn’t be the first art piece that understands controversy as part of its essence.