{"id":428233,"date":"2025-12-06T06:52:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T06:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428233\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T06:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T06:52:18","slug":"horses-is-a-hit-but-its-studio-might-still-be-in-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428233\/","title":{"rendered":"Horses is a hit, but its studio might still be in trouble"},"content":{"rendered":"

After indie narrative horror game Horses<\/a> was banned from Steam two years ago, it put the studio, Santa Ragione, at risk of closure. Studio cofounder and Horses producer Pietro Righi Riva had to make a difficult phone call to the game\u2019s director, Italian filmmaker Andrea Lucco Borlera. \u201cI was terrified for him,\u201d Riva said in an interview with The Verge. \u201cThis was his first game and he put so much work, so much passion, so many years, and it was supposed to be his big breakthrough.\u201d<\/p>\n

But while this all sounds like a happy ending, Riva isn\u2019t ready to breathe easy just yet. \u201cI\u2019m relieved because with all this attention, I\u2019m probably going to be able to give back most of the money [roughly half of $100,000] that I had to borrow,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re not out of the [woods] yet, no.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horses is a short, crunchy-looking game, boasting Dreamcast-era graphics with gameplay that\u2019s no more involved than clicking things to put them in and take them out of your inventory. And while Santa Ragione has had success with Saturnalia<\/a> and Milky Way Prince<\/a> before the bans, it was largely a little-known developer. Riva is aware of how that looks, acknowledging that the bans have been instrumental in Horses punching through the noise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no way the same kind of interest would have happened,\u201d he said. And despite that first difficult call, Riva says Borlera is quite pleased at what the bans have done for his game. \u201cHe\u2019s extremely happy with the reception that the game is getting,\u201d Riva said. \u201cPeople are reading into the game and […] engaging with it in a way that he hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no way the same kind of interest would have happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

That engagement, though, isn\u2019t enough to make up for the access Steam could have provided. While Riva is grateful for the support of gamers and storefronts like GOG, it\u2019s not enough, and he\u2019s still very much in fear of Santa Ragione\u2019s future. \u201cEven with all the publicity, all the reporting, all the reviews, everything else,\u201d he said. \u201cThis still does not compare to the kind of audience we would have on Steam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steam has an outsize influence on the PC video game market. The indie studios that cannot afford the costs of porting their games to consoles are at the mercy of Valve\u2019s vague<\/a>, capricious<\/a>, and often inconsistent<\/a> moderation whims. Though Horses has found a roundabout way to relative success without it, Riva said that journey has been traumatic, affecting not just him and his team but his peers and future projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is going to be, in my case, and in other people\u2019s case, a certain degree of self-censorship,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying, and it\u2019s going to make people make safer and safer games, me included.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After indie narrative horror game Horses was banned from Steam two years ago, it put the studio, Santa…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":428234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[171,393,50,9597,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-428233","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-gaming","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-pc-gaming","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115671305117804741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}