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The game "Horses" now barred on Steam, Epic and Humble Bundle
(www.pcgamer.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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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.
Define unacceptable? It's subjective. A lot of people had a problem with the cover for Nirvanas Nevermind.
It's been about sexual abuse. I'm going to call it universally unacceptable.
Does it count? I find it just kinda sexually icky, and I think it would be harmful to the child. If you think it'd be fine, not even in the gray area, then I guess there's no argument there anymore.
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.
Just confusion about what the stupid acronym stands for.
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 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.
https://lemmy.world/post/39297021
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.
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
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.
https://www.eurogamer.net/its-extremely-frustrating-and-also-fcked-up-one-of-the-worlds-best-indie-studios-is-facing-shock-closure-following-confounding-steam-ban
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.
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