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On December 2, 2025, we reported that Epic Games had decided to ban the controversial game HORSES at the last minute before its planned launch. They had previously approved a pre-release build, whereas Valve had banned it from Steam the previous week. Needless to say, this was a huge blow for HORSES developer Santa Ragione, a small Italian development studio that suddenly found itself cut off from the two biggest PC game stores.

Now, the controversy has reignited. In a recent interview with Game File that was mainly about the Epic Games Store's 2025 growth figures, Epic Games Store General Manager Steve Allison said that the company loves Santa Ragione, but added that the 'Adult Only' rating was a dealbreaker when it came to publishing HORSES on the store.

Well, Santa Ragione did not take kindly to the comment. Today, they responded with a strong, firm rebuttal via the social network BlueSky:

Epic Games made provably incorrect statements about the game’s content, refused to provide details supporting their claims, and has not shared their claimed AO IARC certificate, which normally includes a link for the developer to appeal. They do not ‘love that studio’, they have effectively ghosted us.

The fact that the game does not deserve an AO rating is apparent from the widely available full walkthroughs on YouTube and Twitch, as well as from its distribution on the Humble Store.

According to Santa Ragione, Horses obtained a PEGI 18 and ESRB M rating through the IARC system, not an Adult Only classification.

The game itself is intentionally quite the gut punch. It's set on a farm where the titular “horses” are actually naked humans wearing permanent horse masks, treated entirely as livestock: fed like animals, stabled, made to pull ploughs, raced, and ridden on their shoulders. Horses is presented in a bleak, black‑and‑white psychological horror style, and the player is forced to participate in daily routines and increasingly disturbing tasks that normalize this ongoing dehumanization. The game also includes sexual assault, mutilation, and torture (the "horses" are punished with beatings and castration if they have sex with each other).

That said, the game's supporters (and the developers themselves) believe that it does not warrant an Adult Only classification, and its content, while disturbing, is not as explicit as, for example, sex animations in more popular games that are normally distributed.

Horses is currently available for purchase on GOG, itch.io, and Humble Store.

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