HORSES Studio Closing: Sales Break The Fence With 18,000 ‘Stallitons,’ But ‘Barn’ Foreclosing
The video game industry is brutal, and nothing illustrates this heartbreaking reality better than the recent saga involving Santa Ragione and their controversial horror title, HORSES. Despite shifting a respectable number of units and technically “breaking even,” the HORSES studio is being forced to disband when they should be celebrating.
HORSES’ Sales Break Even With A Cost
In the indie world, selling 18,000 copies in the first two weeks is nothing to sneeze at. Most small projects on Itch.io would kill for those numbers. According to a press release from Santa Ragione, those sales translated to roughly $65,000 in net revenue.
If you’re sitting there thinking that it sounds like a great payday, well, you’ve never tried funding a software company. That money vanished almost instantly, with the developers explaining that the revenue paid back loans and covered the royalties owed to the game’s creator, Andrea Lucco Borlera.
They broke even, which in this industry is a “success,” but it’s an achievement that leaves you unemployed. Unless the game continues to steadily sell, there is no “profit” to fund another adventure. Because they can’t secure enough funding for a new prototype, the team has to split up to find work. The studio noted that reuniting everyone later “will not be easy,” translating that the future of reuniting again is very uncertain.
HORSES Banned and The Steam No-Reason Controversy
The financial struggle was made infinitely harder because the game was slapped by a ban hammer from both Steam and the Epic Games Store. That begs the question: Why was it banned? We literally don’t know, and neither does the developer. Santa Ragione has been vocal about the lack of transparency. When Steam bans a game, they often give vague reasons or no reason at all.
The studio took a swing at the “near monopolistic distribution platforms” (we know who they mean), pointing out that for every high-profile ban like this, there are dozens of smaller games that get quietly snuffed out. It’s frustrating because Steam is full of questionable content—shovelware, asset flips—yet an arthouse horror game gets the boot? It feels arbitrary, and it arguably cost this team their livelihood.
Without those two storefronts, selling enough copies on alternative platforms is truly a miraculous feat. Imagine what they could have gotten if they had a chance to be featured on the Steam and Epic Games homepages’ banners.
The Weird That is HORSES
HORSES isn’t a farming sim where you brush manes and win blue ribbons. It’s a narrative horror game where you spend a summer on a secluded farm with “horses” owned by the farmer. But the stallions you are assigned to take care of are actually enslaved human beings wearing horse masks. Gonna let that sink in for y’all because it’s a lot to take in.
The game is designed to be unsettling and disturbing, forcing players into uncomfortable situations and testing their complicity. It deals with power dynamics and horror in a way that is distinctly “arthouse.” Is it weird? Absolutely. Is it for everyone? Heck no! Yet, this opens a debate: does it deserve to be nuked from orbit, while Grand Theft Auto lets you run over pedestrians? What over the ban reason is HORSES is clearly trying to say something, even if the delivery involves naked guys in rubber masks neighing at you.
Final Thoughts: Santa is in Purgatory, But HORSES is Still in the Fields
Santa Ragione isn’t dead, technically, but they are in a coma. The team expressed hope that if sales remain steady on the platforms that do allow the game (GOG, Itch.io, Humble Bundle), they might eventually scrape together enough cash for a prototype. It is a sobering reminder that “breaking even” is just a slow way of going broke. If you want to support them—or if you are morbidly curious about the horse-mask game—you can still grab a copy on those mentioned alternative storefronts.
