Games

I skimmed through this, and some other stories from the same "news author". Either the author, Matt Wales, is actually bipolar and needs to seek treatment, or he just angles his articles about the given topic based on whichever third party threw him some chump change to buy a coffee.

I've never seen someone be so anti-steam, and pro-steam at the same time. One article is praising steam as the best thing that happened to humanity, the next one is talking about how terrible they are and how much they just want to censor games and kill studios they don't like.

One article is praising Nintendo as the greatest gaming company ever, and the next is talking about how evil they are regarding the palworld lawsuit.

I know publications have their bias, but at least most of them are somewhat consistent in their bias....

I did find this comment under one of his articles regarding this game. (Yes, he's made three articles about this game, one after the other), and I thought it summed up my short experience with eurogamer. (most other comments were very anti-steam, but that's to be expected since everyone else that threw up in their mouths quickly clicked off the article)

Deejay#4435 1 day, 10 hours ago

15 years ago, Steam was a curated walled garden. Every game was manually approved for sale, and if they didn't like your game and didn't think it was good enough, then you didn't get to sell on there. It was gutting when my game was sold on XBLIG, GOG, Green Man Gaming, and some other stores that I can't remember, but Steam just gave us a flat-out "no".

To be fair, the game was pretty crap (Eurogamer gave it an 8/10).

It really feels like some important piece of information is missing from this article. The whole thing is just the dramatised opinions of the guy who’s game got banned, and it’s clear that he thinks very highly of himself:

And while Horses won't be launching on consoles due to porting costs, Pietro says the console makers who've seen Horses have said they'd be "happy to have the game on [their] platform"

"We had multiple publishers actively coming to us," explains Pietro, "and be like, 'Hey, we want to make this game.'"

Looking at the game trailer and stills, I do not believe that this game was the talk of console-town or a publishing darling. It’s a rough as hell indie game about abusing humans with intentionally sexual imagery (I don’t believe him when he says the game is not sexual either, the trailer features people dressed as horses, followed by a shot of real-life horses fucking). If the game was so beloved by consoles, you would think that the “world’s best indie studio” could scrape together a few investors to pay for porting. Their other games have console releases. Where’s the love for the horse themed snuff game on Switch 2?

This is a misleading article implying that the poor devs have had their game ripped from them:

And nearly 18 months on, the studio still isn't certain what triggered the ban.

Except Valve explained in their response:

we found that this title features themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won't distribute. Regardless of a developer's intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor. While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a 'grey area'—it will be rejected by Steam.

Your game crossed lines that Valve has decided are too far for them. You changed the girl into a woman in later builds, but the application YOU submitted showed that there was consideration made in putting a small child into your horse-bdsm-murder game in a sexually suggestive manner. Valve cannot confirm that the rest of your game isn’t going to steer back in that direction, and has made a choice based on the information they have. They do not owe every dev a personalised response when their game is banned for exploiting minors.

The game is going to be on GoG, Epic, Humble, and Itch.io. This dev is chucking a public tanty because he’s not allowed on Steam. This is 100% just a marketing ploy to drum up sympathy and push sales on other storefronts. No doubt a future trailer will contain the phrase “The game that was too scary for Steam is now available on Epic!” or some such.

In the early build reviewed by Valve, day six featured a scene in which a man and his young daughter visit the farm. The daughter wants to ride one of the horses, resulting in an interactive dialogue sequence where the girl rides on the shoulders of a naked "horse" while it's led by the player.

Young girl interacts with naked man and you saw no problem with it...

"The scene is not sexual in any way,"

Maybe not to you but that doesn't change the content of what you submitted to Valve.

the young character was changed into a twenty-something woman. "Both to avoid the juxtaposition," it explains, "and more importantly because the dialogue delivered in that scene, which deals with the societal structure in the world of Horses, works much better when delivered by an older character."

Cool, the review build still featured a young girl riding a naked man and you thought that was a great idea...

You might not immediately recognise the name Santa Ragione, but the independent Italian studio has been creating boundary pushing, award-winning games for over a decade and a half now.

Award winning, best indie game studio yet the name is unrecognisable...? It's pretty fishy just from the beginning of the article. I checked their game, some are not well received, and their latest game have only 92 reviews on Steam. Not good, seems like the studio is already on their way out and he believe Horses gonna save the studio.

But if you look at the game

https://youtu.be/JYewjNYxV-8

It's an asset flip niche horror game, it's not gonna save the studio. So what left is the dev trying to spin a sob story to hopefully rile up the anti-steam crowd to get some pity sales.

I have definitely noticed an uptick in the number of articles attacking Steam. I find all of them to be a little over blown.

one of the world's best indie studios

How this metric is measured? They have a handful of games that are nothing compared to tons of other indie devs on the market. Calling them "One of World's best" seems misleading.

Well this guy seems totally full of shit. Might be time to flush

one of the world's best indie studios

Never heard of them, nothing of value lost

Genuinely do not care about your horror-bandwagon pedo ponyplay game. Valve has made the right call, and I can't blame them for not wanting to become a pedo bar. Roblox can keep that title.

Of course it was Santa Ragione.

Met one of the founders years ago, acted like he had discovered the wheel and hot water himself when all he did was come up with Mirrormoon, which while good is anything but the smash hit he was pretending it was, it just happened to be the most successful italian indie game at the time of, like maybe 3 of them?

These guys are pathologically auteur, and from everything I've seen of them, think they're way smarter than they actually are.

I understand that this is a problem for the studio, but no one would expect Disney to distribute a David Cronenberg movie.

Steam is THE mainstream distribution platform for games, and for that they are already pretty open for weird shit.

It's this weird american free speech thing only for video games: "I'm allowed to make it so you have to sell it!". No?

I think I read a different article because there are some key factors here:

1. (not super important but overlooked here) The “horse” is a woman
2. (definitely important) The scene was only an unfinished scene still being worked out
3. Valve has given no recourse or appeals process despite good faith efforts

I’m not trying to trash Valve, and FUCK child abuse, but I definitely think Valve should have handled this more fairly. Given the established premise of the game, I don’t think the existence of that scene in an unfinished state was a move consistent with “hey let’s make a pedo game”.

Feels like some key piece of information is omitted here tbh

I hate to say it but I perfectly understand why Valve wouldn't want to carry this particular title. Sucks for the makers honestly but what they're trying to convey may be best served someplace else anyway.

You might not immediately recognise the name Santa Ragione

Because you clickbait vultures don't use proper nouns in your goddamn headlines?

i think we’re missing the forest for the trees here by arguing wether valve should’ve allowed the game or not.

the fact that valve is in such a dominant position that them refusing to sell a game can mean not only the game’s failure, but the shutdown of the studio making it, is a big problem. and it’s not just this game, after the payment processor affair, VILE: Exhumed (a game about sexual assault, among other things) was banned from steam (for being about sexual assault), before it could even release

game devs shouldn’t have to rely on just one vendor’s approval to sell their stuff, it’s an unhealthy ecosystem.