. . . it’s about to venture into even stranger, darker territory with Horses, an unsettling first-person narrative horror adventure set on a farm whose livestock consists of naked masked humans.
“While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us,” Steam’s automated response read, “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.”
. . . the studio now suspects a work-in-progress scene from day six of Horses’ narrative (the game follows the player across 14 days as they work as a hired hand on the farm where the “horses” are held) might be the culprit. 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. “The scene is not sexual in any way,” the studio notes in its FAQ, “but it is possible that the juxtaposition is what triggered the flag.”
. . . notably, the final version of Horses has been reviewed and approved for distribution across numerous other PC storefronts, including the Epic Games Store, GOG, the Humble Store, and Itch.io. 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”.
From the description of the scene which seems to have triggered the refusal to platform the game, the studio probably pushed the envelope too far.
to me it feels more like the other shoe has dropped on the censorship stuff that was hitting Steam a few months ago. I understand how that scene is controversial, and even in a film context I think that one might be too much for most studios. But if this was November 2024, I think Steam would have greenlit this game without a second thought.
The article details how the refusal to platform the game was before the calls for games to be pulled by that weirdo conservative Christian group whose name I can’t remember.
Valve is in a position where it has to weigh if a game will be deemed too unsavory and cause a response from payment processors. If this game becomes the tipping point then steam as a platform can no longer exist.
Getting the word out about games like this is probably the best thing that can happen at this point. It will put it on the radar of the people that are interested and it will let the art exist in a way that isnt totally ephemeral.
The refusal to sell the game on Steam was apparently before all the champing and gnashing of teeth which lead to a bunch of games being pulled; having a young child ride around on a naked masked person who is forced to comply would be contentious either way.
Even rating it X/AO/Whatever, calling a sequence where a young child rides around on a naked masked person who is forced to comply “contentious” is putting it mildly.
yeah but thats the point of X. its not R. I mean clock work orange is all kinds of effed up but its a great movie. X means graphic sex, or violence, or worse. I think they had another designation at some point that was like super X but I think folks never really paid attention to it.
Sure but you must realise that if Steam were to platform a game featuring a child riding a naked adult in a horse mask, a sequence that the devs have removed in order to have the game on any platform for sale at all, Steam would face a significant amount of backlash and potential legal action for doing so. Why should Steam be obligated to publish a game?
I don’t think obligated as much as they should not be concerned and there should be no backlash to them for stocking it as long as its separated appropriately. Video storms had porn rooms in the back of the store with some signage and people seemed to be able to handle it and get its an adult thing. Heck maybe even have a second but related steam.XXX site where you have to do bullshit verification to peruse. Then require any game that goes over some threshold of whatever to only be visible there. people can login with their steam accounts and have them connected provided they jump the additional hoops. these things are not impossible to work with.
Whether you believe a platform should get backlash for platforming something in questionable taste and legality is entirely separate to whether they actually will.
The majority of countries where Steam sells games have strict laws regarding the depiction of minors in any kind of situation which could be considered sexual, whether it’s a real child or not. It’s a very strange hill to die on when the devs clearly identified that was the issue and removed it from their game.
Im pretty much always against censorship. As described it does not sound sexual as its just nudity and this riding thing. I mean nobody talks about lady gadiva like she fucked a horse. The hill to die on is weird to me to use in this situation. Its one conversation about something that neither of us has any ability to effect.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information that may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically inconvenient, or morally questionable by an authority or group.
In this case the group is steam. Government censorship is not the only kind. You can have corporate and even self.
They were common enough in movie stores when I was in high school and college. I feel our society has gotten just that much more prudish in the new millenia.
I don’t think society is actually more prudish; you couldn’t have had 80% of the shows that are made now, 50 years ago. I think there are just several things that combine to make it appear otherwise (note that these are all 100% my opinion):
Corporatism has run rampant, and corporations detest liability. Independent movie stores didn’t have to worry about being noticed by political groups, but big chains did, and big corporations’ shareholders only care about stock prices are much more reactive to ‘threats’. And big corporations killed most independent stores, even before digital took over. Digital is all big corps.
The US has sanitized violence in media to such an extent (e.g. superhero movies where logically thousands of people die, or where all violence is ‘bloodless’ but not cartoonish) that I think sex has become the only metric by which to delineate ‘kid’ vs ‘adult’ media for a lot of people. That has a feedback effect on large media creators, who will be less likely to depict sex in anything not squarely targeted for adult consumption, which in turn makes any sexual content in e.g. young-adult media stand out even more, which will get it outsize attention by the wannabe morality police types.
Prudish political groups made a lot of strategic inroads into positions of policy influence by using “protect the children” rhetoric, with sex being the #1 thing they actively demonized. It’s much less common to see pro-sex groups making any kind of public messaging or policy impacts, so it can seem like the prudes are the majority.
WRT the current thread: Steam doesn’t ban sexual games at all; at this point it’s one of if not the largest adult games distributor just thanks to its user base. They even implemented a ‘private’ feature for games so people could buy adult games on their Steam account but hide them from others, to encourage people to buy adult games. This particular game is really just an unfortunate case of edgy content accidentally running up against a legitimate guardrail. I won’t be surprised if Valve does walk back the ban soon based on the amount of media coverage.
I don’t think the quality of Black Ops 7 itself has affected the sales a lot honestly. Of course, if the game was sensationally good, there would be a lot of hype and people will get it, but my impression is that a game being bad generally doesn’t stop a game from reaching their sales targets. What you see what CoD and some other big franchises is the effect studios gradually ruining their reputation over many years by consistently releasing subpar products. They are now seeing the consequences of their extreme focus on maximizing the profit from each game, but to be completely honest, it was probably totally worth it from a financial standpoint even if upcoming games flop completely.
“Yeah we lost all credibility with our fans and people who still play our games are generally seen as uncultured sheep with gambling addictions. And the culture we do have is massively attractive to racists, creeps, and bigots. Were not taken seriously as an exports option.
But boy did we make a fucking KILLING selling Nikki Minaj skins”
I’m so tired of games that have the weapons you’d like to use behind a paywall I hope they all crash and burn. COD just as much as Battlefield. I might simply go back to playing CS 1.6.
no man, I wish it was. basically you paid for the base game for the pleasure to be grinding for guns unless you pay again every season another 20 to 30 extra.
Or weapons you have to grind for all season long because they are overpowered and the meta, only to have the game publisher and developer nerf it back to normal and fair balanced specs AFTER the season comes out and they get their money from people playing for tier skips to get it faster in the season…
… Only for next season for the exact same meta chasing bullshit treadmill again
Call of Duty MW II (new) did that shit with the incendiary shotgun but only after the season ended
I quit the entire series cold turkey and only after that played the Cold War campaign (since I never played it)
He made a pretty solid argument (I say this as someone with no interest in CoD so that’s my perspective) that the entire game was the first CoD built with AI “assistance” from the ground up. Probably by force by management.
If I wasn’t already totally uninterested in CoD that video certainly killed any interest I had in it. Kinda refreshing to see someone so vehemently against a shitty product that they feel it is a “moral good” just to tell OTHER PEOPLE not to buy it.
I mean… they’re essentially live service games with the amount of microtransactions and seasons, yet Black Ops 7 was announced only 8 months after Black Ops 6 launched.
No wonder it sold poorly - basically eating their own tail.
They seem to not understand what made the good games good, and then when a game does do well, they try to milk it. The yearly releases are likely too much as well.
Black ops 3 was cool -> ruined with predatory micro transactions. anyone remember how they would pair you with people who had the items you were viewing in the loot box menu in an attempt to get you to purchase? And then the odds were stupidly low to actually get the items.
The modern warfare reboot was cool. But again they slowly ruined it entry after entry.
Black ops was kinda neat last year. Then they tried to milk it again.
Idk I’m kinda rambling here but if you’ve played most of the titles I think it makes sense as to why people aren’t always getting every one at this point
why can’t it just go back to like it was way back in the day with like 8 on 8 or whatever and a solid single player? why do I need to be able to look like a Gundam to shoot people?
If I want to play a shooter with silly characters i’ll play Fortnite.
It’s the funny skins and convoluted menu. I don’t want to play Fortnite with my Call of Duty and I don’t know how to get to the campaign or multiplayer options.
Also, why do I need a 1-billion GB app to launch the game I’m playing?
eurogamer.net
Aktywne