An illustration showing several humanoid figures with horse heads seated on benches inside a wooden room with large windows, rendered in black and white.

The first thing you notice is that they are not actually horses. In the paddock behind the farmhouse stands a group of naked humans, silent and wretched, each with a rubber horse mask fixed over their face and a heavy steel collar. Seeing them for the first time, I was startled. It’s unusual to see such disturbing imagery in a video game. My first question: is this the reason the game got banned?

Horses is an Italian indie horror that made headlines last month when it was announced that Steam — by far the most prominent digital storefront for PC games — was refusing to sell the game because of its extreme content. This was unusual: Steam is generally known for its lenient content policies, and it hosts all manner of explicitly sexual and hyper-violent titles. The publisher, Santa Ragione, protested that it had invested €100,000 in the game and that the loss of prospective income would likely force the company to close after its release. The reason for the ban is opaque, so I downloaded Horses to judge it for myself.