Whenever the game is mentioned there has always been someone who show up and says it contained CP which it very much didn't and defend steam decision when steam has history of making nonsense decision on bans (like this year when a game was band because of mention of SA in a text... in a horror game). I feel like I am going crazy especially when they completely disappear once I like any article that covered the topic. Edit: after playing the game it's fucking crazy that this game is causing people to lose their mind.
sorry but this post is like completely incomprehensible for me. can i get some context?
Posts like these appearing 1st spot on my frontpage always make me think I'm super out of the loop with some big thing, then I notice the 4 upvotes and 2 comments.
Horror game with some minor sexual themes got pre-banned for years from steam with only vague accusations of one (now altered to only having adults) non-sex scene being interprered as pedophilia and decided to lean on the fact of the ban as a sales pitch since they have to appeal through the tiny alt storefronts.
People have since then began campaigning slander against it on the basis of "ICKY BAD, GOOD RIDANCE" by vagueposting misinterpretations of what it is, from dismissive "pedo game" without checking the facts to surface "this looks like kink" glance analisis of the setting - a farm where humans are tortured and broken to become "horses" in a very unsexy way.
I will link this article, but a tldr it's a new indie game that was just released that steam has banned despite them censoring the scene they had a problem with with no communication. The game has also been banned last minute from epic games but it's available in gog.
Idk, it's a kink focused game... Including a scene where a kid ride a naked guy in a horse mask was a choice.
They might have fixed it, but like... They still made that scene. I mean, if someone has "sex" with a 14yo, but then say they didn't know their age, does that make it ok?
Besides there are 1000s of shovel ware games published weekly on steam, PSN, and Nintendo estore. They probably don't have effective moderation teams to handle all that and trigger if the game gets reported enough. Then there's probably an appeal process, but it's not going to be fast.
Either way, it's no loss to me. Not interested in a horse kink game at all, especially when so many actual good games exist.
it's absolutely not a kink game. It's a game about the dehumanisation of the Other. It's about how easily you as a bystander are dragged into participating. It is anti-fascism at its core, with a message told through transgressive means.
One can easily draw parallels to the quandaries guards might have had in nazi death camps, and it made me think where I would draw the line if I were in similar situations
Eh. Nude guy with horse mask just isn't the way to go about it, at least for me.
Its not a kink game.
porn game included a child
porn game got removed from steam for including a child
porn game removes child and tries to get on steam again
steam says no, we can't trust you after trying that
weird people angry at steam
the child was very much included in a kink
Its not. Any of those. ITs about human slavery and how easily we can turn people into nothing but objects. The people are nothing only wearing horse masks and clothing.
If this was written into a book people would give two shits about it and think its kind of edgy.
I'm going to take the downvotes on this one:
There are a lot of people who are deeply devoted to the Cult of Gabe. They can't stand even the slightest criticism of their main storefront for digital games and so, whenever valid criticism of Valve and Steam shows up their main response is to shoot the messenger.
In this case it is calling into question if Horses actually had CP in it, which would justify Valve's first decision (but not necessarily their insistence on not giving the game a second chance after revisions). But you can also see it when Tim Sweeney called Steam out for taking a huge cut of sales (30%) and all the people that then complained about EGS being Chinese spyware and Sweeney being a rich bastard. Or whenever someone brings up Steam's market hegemony, which makes Steam as close to a de facto monopoly as one can get on an unregulated market, and the glazers start talking about how every other storefront sucks instead of the issues with such a dominant actor.
It is a classic combination of deflection and whataboutism.
How are you supposed to contrast and compare two things without "whataboutism"? That's the whole point.
If you're going to complain that one store front does something, you have to look at what other store fronts do. Maybe it's unique to one, or maybe it's something they all do. Maybe one does something better but other things worse. That's like the entirety of comparing any two things.
sigh This one again.
Because Tim Sweeney does nothing in good faith. This the same Tim Sweeney who said their store will always careful curate which games are allowed on, and now allows any old shovelware on? Tim Sweeney does not criticise Valve because he genuinely believes what he's saying. He does it because he's jealous that his storefront isn't the leading one, and never will be. He says nothing sincerely.
Now on to the 30% cut, which is the industry standard cut. How's Epic's 12% cut working out? Their store cannot support itself and is being kept alive by Fortnite money. It cannot offer basic things that the Steam Store does, like gift cards, absorbing all payment processing fees and keys. And those keys are offered to devs free of charge, and to do with whatever they want. They can sell them (and most devs do!) and Valve never sees a cent of money for those keys, which effectively lowers the Steam cut. Here's a quote from the Epic vs Apple lawsuit.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221022092136/https://casetext.com/case/epic-games-inc-v-apple-inc-2#N31287
I recommend reading the whole thing.
There's a lot to criticise Valve over, like how they don't do anything against rampant nazism on their platform. But uninformed people who keep harping on about the 30% cut, while completely ignoring all the factors that effectively lower the cut, are getting tiresome. Which other platform gives devs free keys to sell elsewhere without the original platform seeing a cent of money from those key sales? It's generous as hell.
Unsubbing because this place is just as much of a circlejerk as the regular gaming subs.
I do agree that this could be a contributing factor because I remember arguing not too long ago with people and when I mentioned that steam could abuse their monopoly power on they acted like I was crazy for even suggesting that. Because I guess steam is ran not by human who might want to abuse their power for more profit but by angels with the goal of uplifting gamers. I also care about this situation specifically because this has been an issue with visual novels for a while now (lead to a ban of one of the most beloved vns from steam despite it being a censored version, but it's on gog at least) and with this year collective shout pressure thie wishy washy policy have expanded to more than just visual novels and have been hitting indie games too. Which fucking sucks because these guys need as much visibility as they can have
What?
What what ?
Based on all the articles I've seen about this game, it's a heavily BDSM themed horror game. Discussions and reviews mention ponyplay, petplay, bondage, chastity and more. It wouldn't be the first game to use fetishes like this for horror. It definitely won't be the last.
Which puts Steam's actions in a bit of a different context.
You seem fairly convinced that the game that was submitted to Valve didn't contain "CP", but children engaging in fetish content feels an awful lot like CSAM. Even if you think that's morally okay in a video game, it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of other people don't. And most marketplaces have clear, blanket bans on any depiction of children in any sexual context.
The fact that this is such an obvious prohibition leads people to the idea that this is being done explicitly as a marketing tactic. I have no idea if that's true. But if it is, it definitely seems to be working.
The biggest problem here is how the perception of dehumanization and kink are too fused to the point of people growing unnable to look at pure horror material without thinking it might be kink, and these observers either DONT know actual kink or consume so obssessively that they cant parse non-kink stuff as such.
Most BDSM material is highly ritualized to create clear borders that this is not an act of cruelty. Horror porn lets itself to be much more brutal in its depictions of "treating people like cattle". Horses caters to neither crowd, it is too direct for bondage and too tame for gorn. It is just a black and white oldschool straight horror movie in days where everything is porn addiction and watching out for the dirty evil machinations of the evil porn consumers because at any moment you might find out that this silly cute sticker that you love using in your message apps is secretly cropped porn.
Really interesting point that I didn't think about.
You can read the devs comment that this wasn't a fetish content and isn't meant to be sexual in any way. That scene was later changed to feature all adults and was still banned. And I don't buy the last part at all with 0 evidence.
I'm not saying the game is intended to be arousing or pornographic. The devs have said as much. And the horror context and the content of the game that has been shared online makes that very clear.
But policies about CSAM and adult content don't really care about that intent. I can't find Steam's, but itch.io's is easily googled: https://itch.io/docs/creators/faq#is-adult-content-allowed. "Depictions of minors, minor-presenting, or suggested minors in a sexual context are not allowed and will result in account suspension."
And the game is absolutely sexual. It uses the aesthetic of its fetishes as part of the horror. Reviews mention multiple rapes and other violations of consent. Rendering a child in that context would be a pretty clear violation of the policy. And it's hard to argue that the child wasn't in that context when they were shown riding one of the naked human "horses".
(FWIW, the itch.io policy also prohibits depictions of rape and 'extreme harm'. I won't be surprised if it gets taken down from their storefront, along with Steam and the Epic Games Store.)
My point is those rules are bullshit and would lead to censorship of so many games. And the fact that the scene was changed and was still banned even after aging up the character just makes it more obvious no one has any clue what are steam policies at this point. Also speaking of itch.io and their bullshit guideline they have also basically banned cat ears because I guess it falls into "animal related" and extreme harm which could mean anything because it fucking includes vomiting (I guess dispatch can't be on itch.io then. We can't let that perverted game on there)
I think it's bullshit when you're talking about adult characters, but not children. And the dev knows it was a problem given he changed the scene.
If Valve wants to have a zero tolerance policy around sexualizing minors and doesn't want to re-evaluate after that demo, I don't really have a problem with that. I want them to do better and enforce against more games that sexualized minors.
Especially because, ethics aside (and tbh I don’t know if they should be put there, idk enough about Horse to have….a horse in this race…)
BUT ethics aside- credit card processors and other money institutes are the ones often pushing these rules, and the companies options are often “compromise or lose the ability to do business.”
It is BS that this is being decided by Mastercard and not like….artist or the law or whatever. But it is also true
you realize censorship is only when it comes from the government right? and when is not allowing csam considered censorship? like is that really what your trying to argue?
Give me any evidence that the game contains csam.
You ignored the point entirely. Yes the rules and terms being taken literally would restrict dozens of games, but Horses violated both the letter and spirit of the rules. All they had to do was not include the 16 year old riding a naked woman in a game that has multiple violently sexual themes. That's it. If they never did that in the beginning, this wouldn't be an issue. You can't pull a whataboutism on animal ears because Horses wasn't being called out on its horse theme. It's being called out on featuring children in what is borderline horror porn.
The game currently aged up that character and is still denied. And again you keep yapping about this game but it seems you don't know shit ? Explain to me how this is a "horror porn" and could you elaborate or "violent sexual themes" part ?
Steam has a one-time only review process. Them changing it after doesn't really help much as that content is what got them struck out to begin with and Valve isn't going back to it. They should have never done it with a minor character to begin with. In regards to your second point, the section of the game where you help the farmer acquire a horse-woman and the farmer has his dog-man rape the horse-woman while he tries to get off through his underwear. That right there is "violently sexual", even if it's not meant to arouse.
And I think that policy is fucking stupid especially for an indie studio with a track record. Black souls got more leeway when it featured worst content and this game doesn't even come close to that even when we include the previous build. And yes good job you named something that happened in the game but that happened on a separate day where that child character wasn't anywhere near the farm anyway. So why is it relevant in this discussion ?
Black Souls sidesteps it by having all of the sexual content removed from the steam version of the game and the only way to enable it is to get a file from the developers site and adding that to your game folder to enable that content and the subsequent encounters tied to it. The steam releases of most porn games follow this method and Valve has signed off on them because the sexual content has to obtained off of Steam. It doesn't matter that the kid isn't near the rape scene. It's the fact that the minor character was naked to begin with. Its the fact that the devs went "this content is not meant to arouse or titillate the senses" and then had the farmer try to get off mid rape scene. It's multiple elements coming together, but the kid is the absolute hard rule breaker. If all the other explicitly sexual shit wasn't around, then maybe the game wouldn't have been banned.
Other vns did get banned even with this side step despite them not being close to their level. Which again highlights the issue that steam rules are random.
And you seem to lack any amount of media literacy because what they said about the content isn't meant to arouse while the farmer tries to get off is very much true. That scene was disturbing and you can't look me straight im the eye and say it's fucking sexual. Did you actually play the game ?
[deleted]
https://preview.redd.it/nh611a7lf75g1.jpeg?width=1425&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c4ee598058bad71be245676ed2261f3c95ff181b
Since you cant be bothered to do the smallest amount of research on what you are talking about, the "child" in question is there on the right. Does that look like a duck and act like a duck to you?
except the devs have already admitted the version they showed steam had a kid instead of the woman,
Yeah and said kid was not involved in anything sexual.
"not meant to be and still is" are two things that can coexist, they may of not intended to make a kink/fetish game but they did regardless, like they still had a kid in a sexual scene
It's not a kink game and a kid wasn't in a sexual scene. You're making shit up.
The BDSM gear aspect is sexual. There was a way to showcase the dehumanization without the gimp masks and bondage gear. Doing that in conjunction with having a child ride a naked woman while both are wearing said bondage gear is the problem.
There isn't a gimp mask in the game or BDSM gear. Why do I get people commenting making up details about this game ? Did you even bother to do bascic level research ?
What the fuck are you babbling about
A game that was recently banned from steam and there has been a bit of a discourse about it.
What's it called?
Horses
want to link this
The only thing weirder than csam content is the lengths people will go to defend it
The game literally had no fucking csam. Edit: so you block me after I called you out on lying about the game content. Really cool.
Real quick, have you ever met a person that was well adjusted who had defended csam content, or who had referred to themselves as an ml?
Like, dude, you seriously need to get off the internet. Not in a funny, mocking way. You're clearly ruining your life, mate.
I'm gonna block you now, but know that I'm rooting for you to change
The game had no csam content. I have never met a person that wanted something to be csam as badly as you do. Does that count as an answer for your first question?
except that it did when they showed it to steam and the devs have already admitted that.
No it did not. There was no sexual situation involving a child at all.
they had a child riding on a naked man in a horse mask,
It was a naked woman and nudity is not inherently sexual
When the naked people are wearing BDSM gear, then yeah it does. They did not have to use said aesthetic for the dehumanization aspect of the game. They could have chosen different items but this is the problem now.
The only "BDSM gear" is a collar, you know, the same ways animals are tagged? Do you know what you are talking about? Like at all?