- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
Currently, only GOG and Itch are still selling this game.
EDIT: It seems the game has returned to Humble Bundle.
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Fuck censorship.
All devs should release their games on their own websites and get paid in Monero.
Just bought it out of principle on GOG. It’s $3, you should too
So wait, why did Epic ban the game?
I will admit I pre-ordered the game on GOG because GOG advertised it as being “Banned from Steam!” and I assumed VISA and Mastercard were fucking around again… Well that’s five dollars for a game I don’t wanna play because I don’t want to wind up on a list
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.
I nominate DLSite and JAST.
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.
Does being naked make something sexual? I would argue that for content to be sexual it has to have intent to cause arousal.
The fact that it vaguely resembles fetish content does not in and of it’s self make it fetish content.
The trailers i have seen for this game do not seem to intend to cause arousal, they seem to want to make the player empathize with the plight of domesticated animals
I can believe the the dev in that it wasn’t intended to be sexual. But should intent excuse otherwise unacceptable content? Valve says it depicts a sexual interaction, though that seems to be debated a lot.
My own opinion is that it’s too close, and that this is the kind of boundary shouldn’t be pushed. Despite intentions, the dev really should have known better than to send in anything that could be interpreted as even remotely pedo content.
Considering there website proudly shows it is banned on Steam I’m sure this was done on purpose for the publicity.
Why did Epic ban it though? They didn’t get the ‘tainted’ preview version and normally love to have games that aren’t on Steam.
It might not be what they planned but they’re now using it as an opportunity for more publicity to get something out of it especially now there are some potential sales they won’t be getting anymore.
Anything’s possible but I wouldn’t assume it was planned unless something else came up. I think he’s just riding the accidental publicity, which I don’t really blame him for, though the dishonesty of his spin kinda pisses me off.
I’d like to hear epic’s explanation on why the clean version was still too much.
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 🤷
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.
Calling it csam ensures there’s no confusion about it being abuse.
Just confusion about what the stupid acronym stands for.
I mean, it’s not like people were miraculously born with the knowledge of what CP meant. That had to be learned just like CSAM.
Calling it “porn” makes it sound more legitimate and less like the heinous abuse that it really is.
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.
Yep, I’ve since read some other articles and it seems there’s more to this specific case
There’s been so many vague articles about what happened, I’m not sure we’ll get a clear picture at this point.
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.
Someone who claimed to have played the game said the privates were sensored.
The game concept feels very political, not sexual from what I am hearing.
My guess is the AI just flagged it, and noone actually reviewed it. Now that it is news, they don’t want any bad press, so they are standing by the ban, when otherwise they might have reversed it.
Forming an opinion from your made up justification is a sign of poor judgement
It’s a direct quote from the article you’re commenting on, and that my opinion is based on.
But please, don’t let me stop you from attacking my character instead of my argument
I was talking about your comment, not the quote. Weird that you assumed otherwise
“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.”
Devs were not given the opportunity to change it as it wasn’t there in the first place
Yes it was
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…
They just have to claim she’s 1000 years old like the Japanese do.
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
That’s not how this works, you don’t get to decide what is acceptable for other people. It’s people like you who galvanize Mastercard and Visa in trying to control what kind of content we’re “allowed” to purchase.
To be clear this all sounds repugnant to me, but i realize Im not the sole arbiter of taste and have no interest in telling other adults what (legal) things they are and aren’t allowed to do.
If the game is so bad it’ll tank, it doesn’t need outside forces influencing it.
That’s literally how it works. If you run a store selling/licensing media you get to decide what’s on the shelves and what isn’t.
Um, he didn’t say he was deciding for others, he said he could understand how others would be hesitant… sounded like he was supporting your very point that people have a right to have their own opinion.
The only reason someone wouldn’t want to sell something is because of pressure from others - you boil it down enough and the logic is “I don’t want to sell this because others will judge me”, which stems directly from others judgement, being my entire point.
You can claim “Valve doesn’t want to sell it for moral reasons”, but they’re not a moral body, they’re a corporation - their only job is to earn money.
The more people feel they can dictate what a retailer sells, the worse it gets for all of us, and retailers choosing to drop things rather than “roc k the boat” is a problem.
Sure, this is a pretty repugnant case, but the slippery slope starts somewhere.
People are free to pressure retailers on what to sell and what not too. Saying they can’t would be far worse. And the retailer is doing the job of making money… by following the 2ishes of the populace. This is the free market capitalist society we live in. Completly sucks, but it is consistent.
I don’t disagree, I’m just calling the people who choose to complain morons, because again I don’t believe they should be the arbiters of what is acceptable.
Basically, you’re free to have your opinion, but keep it to your fucking self and your fucking echo chambers you regressive fucking failures (the general you, not you specifically)
Interesting point. But in general, who are the people complaining in the wrong spot. I suspect people basically are complaining in thier echo chambers… social media. And likely noone cares. But then the media jumps in and picks it up. So is the media to blame? I read a story about a lady in Britain I think who had like 89 followers and made a statement. It went viral. Suddenly her statement to her echo chamber was in the news. It ruined her life actually.
So are we saying the media should be banned on reporting what is said inside echo chambers, or are we saying public posting of opinions should be banned?
the slippery slope starts somewhere.
You know slippery slope is a fallacy right? The “slippery slope” can also stop anywhere.
I regret my short hand of “slippery slope” but it’s not a coincidence that less than 6 months ago payment processors used their influence to get a game pulled from steam and now all of a sudden steam is self censoring based on content.
Whatever the non-fallacious version of “there’s an escalating pattern here” is what’s happening.
Go ahead and read up https://lifehacker.com/entertainment/why-steam-banned-adult-games
Except this particular ban happened in 2023, way before the paypros got in the scene.
Along with the official release date of the game (December 2), the statement revealed that Horses was indefinitely banned on Steam in June 2023 – days before it was set to premiere on IGN’s Summer of Gaming event.
Do the other stores hosting the game have the same payment processors?
That’s not how that works. You don’t get to decide what a store does and does not sell. Steam refuses hundreds of games a year, this one doesn’t get special treatment.
Saying “I understand why (store) would not want to carry this product” is not the same as saying “no store should carry this product.”
I’m not admonishing the store, as you said it’s up to them to carry what they like. I’m admonishing you and people like you for trying to exert pressure on the store to not carry something you personally don’t like, because again, you’re not intended to be in charge of what others sell.
When did I (or anyone else) exert pressure on Steam to not carry this? My understanding is this is a decision Steam made.
Earlier this year steam updated its guidelines to prohibit content that “may violate the rules and standards set forth by steam payment processors and related card networks”
Visa and Mastercard pressured steam to remove a game because they didn’t agree with its content. Visa and Mastercard only care because they believe they end users care - that’s you, a potential end user of visa and Mastercards service. Valve only cares because visa and Mastercard care.
You saying “I see why they wouldn’t want to sell the game” helps them to pressure steam into self censorship.
You’re speaking with an awful lot of confidence on stuff you don’t seem to be very well versed in.
For example, you somehow missed the fact that just months after payment processors forced steam to remove a game, they’re suddenly self-censoring.
Go ahead and read up https://lifehacker.com/entertainment/why-steam-banned-adult-games
Steam hasn’t banned adult games. That is proven with a quick search of Steam’s catalog.
You’ve fabricated a straw man, and appear to be furious at it
Visa and Mastercard literally used their influence to get a game pulled from steam this year. So less of a strawman and more “Exhibit A”.
Go ahead and read up https://lifehacker.com/entertainment/why-steam-banned-adult-games
I’m aware. Where did anyone in this discussion do anything remotely similar to that?
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.
Good on you for dismissing years of work from a group of people as a “little horse-porn game”.
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.
Humble page is back up, not sure what happened there.
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.
Steam would literally lose nothing by hosting this game.
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.
Except people give them passes for shit that they don’t extend to other companies. The blind loyalty is stupid
Such as? Perhaps if you specified on what they’re getting a pass for people could be a little less blind.
Practically inventing loot boxes.
Killing ownership of videogames.
The usual.
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.
I mean, he released the communication he’s received. It’s not super clear. And the things he thinks it was isn’t even in the current version of the game
The response said “no CSAM”.
If they had to scratch their heads trying to figure out what parts of the game needed to change to not include allusions to that, then they have bigger problems than not releasing on Steam.
They did change the one scene where that could have even conceivably applied. It wasn’t actually that to begin with, either.
The scene where a little girl asks to ride a naked man, and then rides a naked man? You don’t see why that might be problematic?
Why is reading so hard for so many on this platform?
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.
Like for instance, when epic came out with their exclusive access titles being a part of their business plan, valve could have responded with their own exclusive access system and had a good chance of killing off epic and others in the process. Instead they just ignored it and people like me continued using them and didn’t even consider epic even when their anticompetitive actions switched to ones that would have benefitted me (free games), because I could see the shithole they wanted to bring gaming to if their platform achieved dominance.
No place for challenging art in video games. Books and movies have been pushing boundaries for millennia, but this new medium is way too effective at affecting people
-Valve, probably
I guess you wouldn’t be wrong to say that sexual abuse of children is challenging and pushes boundaries.
E: see replies.
CSAM has nothing to do with this conversation. Are you lost?
I’m on the fence about the topic, but you’ve gotta be dense to believe CSAM has nothing to do here. The accusation is one of CSAM, so the argument is whether the scene is CSAM or not.
In a perfect world the question would be simple, but in the reality we live in, you have to consider if the art will be misused - and that’s assuming the artist is honest about their intentions in the first place.
Maybe look up why the game was rejected from Steam in the first place.
The distinction may seem like nitpicking but no, CSAM is a legally defined term of depictions of actual children being sexually abused.
This game does not feature any such content. Not just because there are no depictions of real children, but also because the fictional children depicted aren’t subjected to sexual abuse.
Valve’s language cites “sexual conduct” which in this case reportedly (I didn’t watch it myself) has been stretched to include nudity that is non-sexual in nature.
I get why Valve would err on the side of caution, but that TOS decision is no basis to turn around and make the legally relevant claim that the game features actual CSAM.
If that was true, why would the game removing fictional minors for a distinctly unsexual situation not remedy the rejection? Come on now
As like 3000 other comments here have explained, Valve has a zero tolerance policy for what they consider CSAM, meaning they will not reconsider. Which is their prerogative.
CSAM is literally why the game was banned from Steam.
It is available on other, quite popular, stores. GOG and itch.io are household names in PC gaming.
As long as that house exclusively uses Linux.
Lol what?
GOG and Itch sell mostly windows games.
Looks like it has triggered someone’s “we can’t be seen backing down!” reflex at Valve
Doubt it. They probably don’t care enough to have a reflex. They denied it, and likely aren’t going to give it much more thought now that they have.
What are you on about?
The game being banned for a misunderstood piece of placeholder concept art in a Steam approval preview build, which was both removed, and explained. Then Valve refusing to reconsider it and rejecting all attempts to clarify their objections.
if one of the builds for your game contains CSAM, then I don’t really give a shit what alternative builds you have, I don’t want to play anything made by you. kudos to Valve for not dealing with pedophiles.
What I get from reading about that scene, it is just one of many examples in that game that was supposed to show how animals are abused on farms by replacing them with humans and letting other people doing „normal“ things to them like marking them with a branding iron or, like in that scene, riding on them. How any sane person reads anything different into that than: this is supposed to show animal abuse really blows my mind.
I know. It’s not Valve’s fault the developer fucked up and gave them the wrong build to review. But that has literally nothing to do with this article unless you’re somehow trying to insinuate that Valve influenced other storefronts.
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.
It was a child doing pony play, riding a naked adult man-horse. The dev claimed it was not sexual.
I don’t think gaming needs CSAM to be a “unique art form”, but you do you.
Y’all need to read what CSAM is. Questionable or objectionable art isn’t CSAM in the same sense that drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
Depiction isn’t harm, if it was damn near all literature would be in the same category.
Let’s not go down that slippery slope.
Books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – Judy Blume would be considered abuse material on such an asinine slope.
drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
Drawing people having sex isn’t sex, but it is porn. Verbally attacking someone isn’t assault, but it can be abuse. Drawing a comic where someone tortures and then kills the president of the United States isn’t murder, but it will get the FBI knocking on your door.
Y’all need to read what CSAM is. Questionable or objectionable art isn’t CSAM in the same sense that drawing a murder isn’t murder and drawing Noncon isn’t rape.
it’s literally legally defined as CSAM in most western countries. and I probably wouldn’t be arguing otherwise, since it looks like the other dude who did that got all his posts deleted by the mod.
Read the plot summary of the play Equus linked above.
Like I say, this sounds like the gaming equivalent of Equus, which, when performed, involves a character supposed to be 17 doing exactly that.
The horses on stage are supposed to be “real” horses, but are performed by human actors. The male actor in these scenes is also typically nude.
NGL, it’s a HEAVY play to read and even heavier to watch, but it also won the 1975 Tony Award for best play…
Is it actually any good? I don’t really play horror, but it mostly just looks odd in the trailer.
I doubt it. The dev puts out slop garbage.
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.
I am just gonna pretend like Epic and HB banned it only after see all this PR work they’re trying to do to save this god awful looking piece of “art.”
And just becsuse the comments here don’t seem to know the real root issue: The game originally featured a child protagonist, and that was what Valve was sent to review. They only changed the protag to an adult after the rejection and now they are throwing a hissy fit over their pedo game being banned.
