I played HORSES this evening. I wrote about it in depth over on MoeGamer, so go read that if you want to find out a bit more about it. Short version: it was a decent Art Game, I'm not sure it'll be remembered in a couple of years' time, and the controversy surrounding it is, frankly, laughable.
That side of things is worth pondering a moment, because it's been an absolutely absurd game of telephone that has culminated in some people — including professional games journalists! — coming out absolutely convinced that the game was justified in being banned because at one point during its development it had something they considered to be child sexual abuse material.
For context, this is the scene as it ended up in the final game. The only change is that the woman atop the horse-masked individual is now in her twenties rather than being fourteen.
If you think that scene is in any way sexual, I really don't know what to tell you. There's nothing the slightest bit titillating about the whole scene, and for the majority of it, it looks like this:
That's "you" on the left, and the girl on the right is the daughter of a wealthy businessman considering purchasing one of the "horses" in the game (actually enslaved, naked humans) — during this scene even the dialogue isn't remotely sexual; instead, the woman delivers a lengthy diatribe about how people should know their place in society, how those with morals perceived to be "loose" tend to have "dangerous" ideas, and how those who live their lives "recklessly and indulgently" end up getting what they deserve.
HORSES is provocative — deliberately so — but honestly, having played through the whole thing this evening, it is so laughably tame compared to some other video games out there that the entire situation just feels bizarre. There are people thumping tables out there arguing that this game deserved to be banned while having absolutely zero knowledge of what the whole thing is actually about, but for once it seems like the majority opinion — even among games journalists — is that this game doesn't deserve the treatment it's gotten.
And that treatment is worth talking about. As Chris Person notes in his excellent piece on the game over on Aftermath, HORSES encountering such difficulty with getting a widespread release is a troubling sight for the industry. "If this is what's considered the limit for which games can and cannot be sold on mass marketplaces," he writes, "then we're all in trouble, and everyone involved in that decision should be thoroughly embarrassed."
The problem is that Valve holds a near-monopoly on the digital PC games market with their Steam platform, and thus a game from a small, independent team with a limited budget not being able to release their game their is very bad news for that team and their game. HORSES has probably sidestepped this particular issue thanks to the widespread press coverage it has had, but it's a solid case study in why the present situation is a bit of a problem.
"Well, just release it elsewhere!" some of you might say. And sure: you can buy the game on GOG.com and Humble. But for most PC gamers, neither of those storefronts are the first place they look to get new games. For most PC gamers, PC gaming begins and ends with Steam — particularly if they do their gaming on a device like a Steam Deck, which, as the name suggests, obviously prioritises Steam as its main source of material.
As I say: HORSES itself is probably going to be all right after all the coverage it's gotten. But will the next game to suffer this situation be as lucky? Probably not.
And besides, part of the reason the HORSES situation specifically is so absurd is the fact that there is much worse stuff already on Steam with zero issues. Not only do reasonably big-name recent releases like Silent Hill f feature more explicit, disturbing content than HORSES does, but you also have shovelware shit like the Sex With Hitler (yes, really) series happily existing with zero issue. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that this is a rather major problem with consistency and transparency.
Transparency is, honestly, probably the biggest problem with all this. HORSES' developer Santa Ragione did their best to try and work with Valve on ensuring that it was compliant with all appropriate platform policies, and when its initial version was rejected, they changed everything that could have been remotely considered to be a bit dodgy — even if, as outlined above, it almost certainly wasn't dodgy. But they were given no chance to appeal, no second chance — it was just gone from the platform, and with it a significant opportunity at organic discovery.
The Epic Games Store situation is even more bizarre. It seems like Epic themselves re-submitted the game to IARC, an international body that issues local content certifications for digital games, and that caused the game to end up with an "Adults Only" rating from the ESRB, which isn't allowed on Epic (except for blockchain and NFT-based games, because Tim Sweeney is a cunt). This is unusual because it's not Epic's place to submit games to IARC or any ratings bodies — it's the responsibility of developers and publishers, and a storefront going out of their way to re-submit something that had already attained a rating is unheard of, and probably not actually allowed.
Anyway, it's all a shitshow, and with this coming amid payment processors continuing to cut off adult content creators and sex workers from their sources of online income, it's just generally a pretty dark, shitty time for various forms of self-expression.
I enjoyed my time with HORSES. I wasn't blown away, but I enjoyed it. It's definitely worth four quid and a couple of hours of your time if you're on board with narrative-centric games that have minimal mechanics. I wonder if it will be remembered in a few years for anything other than this whole situation with the platform holders.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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