In late 2025 there was an indie game called HORSES, developed by Santa Ragione, that was banned from several major distribution platforms, including Steam and the Epic Games Store. Now why would a platform like Steam ban HORSES while still platforming controversial titles like Sex With Hitler, Shower With Your Dad Simulator, Femboy Futa Mania, and Marathon? According to the developers on the HORSES website, Steam rejected the game back in June 2023 and stated:

“After review, we will not be able to ship your game HORSES on Steam. While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us, we found that this title features themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won’t distribute. Regardless of a developer’s intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor. While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a ‘grey area’—it will be rejected by Steam. For instance, setting your game in a high school but declaring your characters are of legal age would fall into that category and be banned. This app has been banned and cannot be reused. Re-submissions of this app, even with modifications, will not be accepted.”

            After playing dumb for a large portion of the blog, the developers then state, “We think the ban may have been triggered during the initial Steam submission by an incomplete scene on day six, in which a man and his young daughter visit the farm. The daughter wants to ride one of the horses (in the game the “horses” are humans wearing a horse mask) and gets to pick which one. What followed was an interactive dialogue sequence where the player is leading, by a lead as if they were a horse, a naked adult woman with a young girl on her shoulders.”

            They then do their best to assure readers that the game is not pornographic. It simply has men and women either naked or in bondage gear wearing horse masks being ridden or tortured by other people. It only uses sexual elements to make people uncomfortable.

            Mission accomplished. Good work team. Oh, they’re shutting down now? Fantastic.

            Rest in piss.

            Regardless, the situation created a firestorm on social media as people jumped to the defense of Santa Ragione. Proud keyboard warriors with contempt for things like “censorship” and “bans on depictions of minors in BDSM simulators” set out to fight for their right to creep. After all, they claimed HORSES is “art,” and any censorship of art is unquestionably wrong.

Fetish v. Art

            In 1964, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart stated in the ruling of Jacobellis v. Ohio, “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ‘hard-core pornography’; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.”

            When it comes to drawing a clear line between art and fetish, I can’t lock down a perfect definition. There are some fantastic works of art that challenge the audience, the art community, and society. If boundaries aren’t pushed, society stagnates. We should experience works that cause us to reflect on our world and question its rights and wrongs.

            But I also think art needs limits. A dramatic performance piece criticizing the medical industry that consists of a drunk man wandering through a subway stabbing people with used needles would no doubt be impactful, but it’s also wrong. Involving kids in sexual scenes is wrong, even if Reddit insists that it’s high art. But there are plenty of classic art pieces involving a motherly figure with a bared breast (scandalous, I know) holding a child. Something like that and HORSES both place kids in proximity to nudity, so why do I think the maternal scene is fine while HORSES is degenerate filth that crossed a line?

            It’s because I view HORSES as a BDSM fetish simulator. Did I play it? No. I watched the trailer and every single danger signal in my head went off and screamed, “This is a fetish game.” I knew it when I saw it. There’s plenty of sexual imagery such as a perverse farmer licking his lips, the people in horses masks wearing leather straps and bondage gear, and the spliced footage of horses breeding. That last part is kind of funny because the developer included in their blog, “It is about tension, not erotic content. (We apologize if we got your hopes up for horse porn.)”

            I’m not going to sit down and type out a multi-page research paper on the difference between art and fetish. I am simply going to say that I know it when I see it, and that kids should be kept out of fetish content.

Steam Doesn’t Have a Legal Obligation to Host Your Content

            Regardless of how you personally interpret HORSES, there is a misconception about free speech that is deeply ironic. Defenders of HORSES said it was the developer’s right to make a pornographic game. It’s free speech. Artists’ free speech should be protected and censorship is bad.

            But what about Steam’s right to free speech? As Gabe Newell cruises around in his diamond-coated super yacht, his company has the right to exercise freedom of association and editorial control. You cannot compel another man’s speech. So the same free speech absolutists defending HORSES became furious when Steam exercised its own freedom to refuse publishing the game. It’s fine to say they’re hypocritical for not banning other controversial games, but you cannot in good faith make an argument in favor of free speech that involves stripping the right to free speech from someone you don’t like.

            “Free speech” says the government can’t lock you up for your freedom of expression. Steam is not the government. (Yet. Gabe might get bored and use some of that infinite money to buy a country or two.) Steam did not throw the developers at Santa Ragione into jail. It just refused to work with a developer that crossed a moral line.

            The internet is a weird place. Different platforms are comfortable with different levels of questionable content. So long as it’s not practicing or promoting illegal activity, whatever. Enjoy your erotic Lion King fanfiction that really gets into the weeds with the fact that Simba and Nala were likely siblings. But a platform has the right to censor whatever they want. Their house, their rules.

Judgment About Judgment

            We have a very free society, but freedom only functions if it’s accompanied by personal responsibility. If you are an artist, you are welcome to push the boundaries of society, but you must accept the responsibility of doing so. You need to accept that your “art” can very easily cross over into “fetish.” If it does, you need to accept that a distributor has just as much free speech as you do, and they have the right to reject your art. Compelling a platform to distribute content against their will is not artistic freedom. It is compelled speech.

            It is not the death of art to allow platforms to use their discretion to censor something. It just means that the world isn’t obligated to distribute your BDSM horse roleplay simulator.

I wear glasses to make myself look more intelligent but creating that illusion is the extent of my smartitude. Life has gotten a lot easier ever since I accepted that I am an idiot. On the bell-curve of intellect, I am near the base of the descent into foolishness.

I’ve met true geniuses. Great thinkers and innovators. But I’ve also met fake geniuses who are only referred to as such because they are relatively smarter than the average idiot (or sub-average idiot.)

Genius is a relative concept, like “healthy fast food” or “group project equality.” You’re brilliant only until someone more brilliant walks into the room. Then you realize that you don’t actually know how microwaves, magnets, and mitochondria function and that your illusive smarts are due to you being the only one who knows how to properly reset the router.

The Spectrum of Brilliance

Remember: Statistically, you are most likely normal. But as I implied before, there’s a bit of a bell-curve of human intellect. To one end lie the fools and at the other end fly the geniuses. Consider the following along that spectrum:

• True Geniuses
  These people don’t just think outside the box. They don’t even see the box. They’ve transcended the box. They know the box is an abstract concept. They build their own boxes for the rest of us to run around inside.
• Smart People (Discount Geniuses)
  They know a lot of things, but only because they sacrificed a social life in order to read articles online. They’re the kings of correct answers during bar trivia—right up until a true genius shows up and casually rewrites the laws of physics before breakfast. That’s when our smart friends realize they are enthusiastic amateurs with Wi-Fi and an over-reliance on Wikipedia.
• Normal People
  This is most likely you. You can set up your own email account, assemble IKEA furniture correctly within a few attempts, and occasionally win arguments by quoting something you half-remember from YouTube. You engage in arguments online and know you’re not really going to change anyone’s mind, but you will still feel like you totally won.
• Idiots
  The misunderstood heroes of The Spectrum of Brilliance. Without them, how would anyone feel smart? They say what they feel, regardless of what everyone else knows. They believe everything they shouldn’t and nothing they should. Their ignorance is their strength. Some of them think they can turn making webcomics into a viable career.

The IQ Food Chain

Each person looks down on someone else while being clueless about the fact that someone else is laughing at them.

• The smart kid in class feels superior until they meet a prodigy.
• The prodigy feels brilliant until they meet someone who not only reads about quantum mechanics but actually understands quantum mechanics.
• And that person? They’re probably crying in a corner because someone else disproved their entire thesis by scribbling notes on a used napkin.
• The idiot is unbothered by it all. They looked up something they believe on Google using quotes and think it’s true because somebody else on the internet agreed with them. Or they’re still trying to make their webcomic profitable.

Conclusion: We’re All Different Levels of Dumb

The next time you feel smart, just remember: someone, somewhere, thinks you’re an idiot. And they’re probably right.

But fear not. Elsewhere, someone tried to charge their phone by jamming the charger into a toaster because they heard heat is energy. Unless you are that person, you’re probably fine.

Very timely, I know. It only took me around 6-8 months to finally finish Final Fantasy XVI, and I purchased it well after its initial release.

I used to love JRPGs and easily clocked dozens to hundreds of hours in various titles, but lately they kind of burn me out. Plus adult life is busy. There’s work and chores and food and exercise. Sitting down to play one game for 60 hours wears away at my soul.

Regardless, I do recommend FFXVI if you have time for it. Story was good. It starts out kind of like a teenager trying to imitate Game of Thrones’ dark, edgy writing and then gets legitimately dark in the second act. Characters are good. Relatable. Flawed. Overall message about free will is kind of beaten like a horse in the end. Boss fights are pretty insane in a good way. Awesome spectacles. And the soundtrack is the kind where I have saved several tracks in YouTube Music and listen to them throughout the day. Fantastic all around.

Praise over. If you want a full summary or review, go to IGN.

This is Dude, Fix It. So let’s fix it.

1- Lots of powers, only a handful are useful. Instead of summons, you beat an enemy and unlock some of its abilities. They change your basic magic attack, which does the same damage to everything. There are no elemental weaknesses (at least from what I saw.) They each have a special ability that does one of the following:

Fire- Dash toward the enemy. Really useful.

Wind- Pull small enemies to you or pull yourself three feet towards a big enemy, and at an enemy’s halfway stun point can add a mega stun. Kind of useful, but against big enemies it honestly gets you a little closer instead of snapping you to them, limiting its usefulness.

Lighting- You make lightning balls. I never used it.

Earth- You have a block that reduces some damage. Barely used it since dodging is better.

Light- Shoots lasers? I don’t know. I didn’t use it.

Ice- You dodge and freeze enemies if you are close to them. Freezes bosses mid-attack. Freezes everything mid-attack. Absolutely overpowered.

Dark- You whip out a different sword that does next to no damage but if it’s fully charged it unleashes the strongest attack in the game.

You can select three movesets, each of which can only map two special attacks. So it presents this giant buffet of something like 30 abilities and only lets you use a handful. When you switch into a moveset, your basic moves are the same. It’s trying to be like Devil May Cry but is afraid to make anything intricate. The Dark set lets you use a different weapon, but it’s barely different from the normal sword except it does 1/4 of the damage. There are two things we can fix with this system:

1.a- More abilities as standard abilities. What if the freezing dodge became your normal dodge? Or there was a dedicated block button and it was stronger after you got the earth powers? Lightning strengthens your melee attacks and lets you chain strong attacks. Light adds a third tier of ultra-charging your magic attacks. The grapple is just always available and can be used for environments as well. Instead of six modes with barely any difference between them, just buff up the core gameplay loop.

1.b- More weapon variety. Just go full Devil May Cry. The idea of the Dark sword moveset was decent. Have three weapons to switch between, with multiple elements dedicated to each weapon. Fire and ice for the main sword. Earth, Wind, and Lightning for dual-swords. Dark and Light for a two-handed sword. Have distinct movesets for each. If you rack up combos with a weapon, it unlocks a mega attack. Picking up a random new weapon that sucks on the second to last boss of the game just leaves me wondering what could have been.

1.c- Enemy elemental types. The enemies don’t have weaknesses or strengths vs certain elements. The giant fire boss will take just as much damage from fire attacks as ice attacks. It had to be designed this way because the game was based around only giving you access to 1/3 of potential movesets at any given time. With my above fixes, you can add in elemental weaknesses and strengths. Sorry, it’s just really weird that I am up against a dude made of literal fire and wrecking his day with my fire attacks.

2- Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up. The characters repeat themselves ad nauseum near the end. Good guy said, “Free will, free will, not slaves, free will, reject fate,” and bad guy said, “Free will bad, free will bad, no free will, free will bad.” For hours. Hours upon hours upon hours of saying the same things. Shut up. Take the script. Cut it in half. I liked the story. The themes are solid. But I don’t need a 20 minute dialogue-heavy cutscene to share one idea. Just shut up and let me play.

3- Shut up and let me play. The fights are cinematic. Beautiful. Tense. But they keep slapping the controller out of your hands to watch yet another movie. Near the end you have a literal 10 minute sequence where you do a quick-time event every two minutes to make sure you’re paying attention. The whole time I was just thinking, “What a cool fight. Sure wish I was participating in it.” When the game begrudgingly lets you have control during a boss fight, they’re top-notch. The flow is incredible. Enemy attacks are relentless yet leave enough warning to let you time your dodges well. But it’s almost like it’s afraid of what it does best and needs to keep interrupting the action to make sure you’re not getting tired of the adrenaline rush.

4- Let me become the big fire dog at will. The game features sequences where you play as Ifrit during boss battles. They’re really fun and do a good job of leaving your moveset roughly the same and just increasing the scale. But every time they pop up there’s a tutorial because a new ability gets added. You get to enjoy it during the 10 minute boss fight and then you don’t get to use it again for another eight hours until the next boss fight. I know it’s part of the story that becoming Ifrit is hard, but add in some big tough enemies as standard foes and let the player fill up a summon bar that lets them turn into Ifrit for a few seconds. Even a mini-version is fine. As it stands, it’s just too rare of an opportunity to enjoy life as a giant fire dog.

Conclusion: I have some gripes about the game, but it’s still good. The main issue is it’s way too long with not enough depth to make the most of its length. All of my points of criticism are about spicing up the combat because it does get pretty repetitive once you find the strongest combos and start moving on muscle memory.