Last week, we reported that disturbing horror game Horses had been banned from Steam, with developer Santa Ragione claiming that Valve refused to provide a clear reason for the ban or discuss it further with the studio. Now, at the last possible minute before the game was set to release widely across other PC store fronts, Epic Games Store has also banned Horses.

This news was shared with us by Santa Ragione, who passed on a press release stating that Epic informed them 24 hours before the game's release that it would not be distributing Horses, despite the studio's build being approved for release weeks earlier. Per the developer, no specifics on what content was at issue were provided, "only broad and demonstrably incorrect claims that it violated their content guidelines." The studio has shared the text of the email sent to them from Epic banning the game, which an Epic Games Store representative has confirmed is accurate. It is as follows:

We are unable to distribute Horses on the Epic Games Store because our review found violations of the Epic Games Store Content Guidelines, specifically the ‘Inappropriate Content’ and ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policies. The ‘Inappropriate Content’ policy prohibits content which “contains explicit or frequent depictions of sexual behavior or not appropriately labeled, rated, or age-gated.” The ‘Hateful or Abusive Content’ policy prohibits content that promotes abuse and animal abuse. This content is prohibited by our Guidelines and cannot be distributed on the Epic Games Store. Additionally, when we [Epic] filled out the IARC Questionnaire based on the content that we reviewed, it received an Adult Only (AO) rating. Products with AO ratings cannot be distributed on the Epic Games Store (the only exception is for products in cases where an AO rating was applied solely due to the usage of blockchain or NFT technology). You have some options on how to move forward: 1. You can make updates to your product to ensure compliance and resubmit it for review. 2. If you believe we made a mistake, you also have the ability to appeal this decision. You can appeal by replying to this email or creating a private discussion on our Developer Support site. Select "Epic Games Store" as the topic. 3. You cannot change the title or content to repurpose it for another game. If you choose not to move forward, we'll refund your submission fee for this product.

When Santa Ragione appealed, the studio says it was denied 12 hours later "without further explanation." Notably, the studio has also stated on social media that its own IARC Questionnaire submission came back with an "M" for "Mature" rating rather than "AO". It is unclear what caused the discrepancy.

As Santa Ragione explains the situation:

Epic's decision comes after the overwhelming support Santa Ragione received last week upon the disclosure of Steam's ban, including the public announcement by Epic's and Steam's competitor GOG that they would promote and support the game. We do not know what triggered Epic's sudden decision. Following the announcement of Steam's ban, Horses became highly visible online, with strong support and a small but vocal opposition. It is difficult not to wonder whether this visibility played a greater role in Epic's choice than any newly discovered issue with the game itself.

IGN asked Epic Games for comment, and received the following statement from communications director Jake Jones: "We set clear guidelines for the content that can be distributed on the Epic Games Store and found violations of those guidelines during our extensive review."

At the time of this article's publication, Horses is still listed as "Coming Soon" on the Epic Games Store.

Horses was previously revealed several years ago, and has made appearances in showcases like The Indie Horror Showcase and Day of the Devs. It's gained some attention for its deeply unsettling premise: a young man travels to a remote horse farm to work for several weeks over the summer, only to find the farmer's "horses" are actually enslaved, naked humans with horse masks affixed to their heads. Horses, says Santa Ragione, is meant to be upsetting: it's at least partly a commentary on what sorts of morally horrifying things people will accept or even participate in without pushback, a subject we found was executed artfully, if upsettingly, in our 7/10 review of the game.

And yet, the game has been banned from now both Steam and Epic. Last week, we reported that developer Santa Ragione said it was rejected from Steam after the team submitted an unfinished but playable build of the game in order to create a store page, an unusual request that Valve said was necessary. Valve then rejected Horses, generally citing its Steam Onboarding Documentation, as well as the sentence, "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."

Santa Ragione has since guessed this was in relation to a scene in the game at the time that depicted a fully clothed child "riding" one of the horses on their shoulders. However, the studio says it has since changed that scene to involve an adult instead of a child, and that all characters in the game are clearly adults in their 20s and up, a fact that has remained true in the final version of the game that IGN reviewed, ironically, on the Epic Games Store. Santa Ragione says it was not given the opportunity to resubmit a build to be reconsidered by Valve, and remains unsure if this scene was even what triggered the ban in the first place. The studio claims that without being able to reach Steam's much larger audience, it is likely it will have to shut down following the launch of Horses.

In response, Valve issued a statement claiming it "gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines" and that its internal content review team discussed a re-review "extensively" but decided against it.

Horses is now available on itch.io, GOG (which publicly expressed support for the game last week), and Humble (which Santa Ragione says confirmed to the studio it would be available).

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

One of the hallmarks of Cyberpunk 2077, particularly after its Phantom Liberty update, is its dynamic police chases. In these, a player committing crimes might find themselves quick surrounded by cops and, a few crimes later, the extra spicy MaxTac. But what you might not have caught onto is that when trying to avoid this massive swarm of cops, you're essentially playing a really, really sophisticated version of a very, very old arcade game: Pac-Man.

At the Game Industry Conference in Poznań, Wielkopolska, I attended a talk by CD Projekt senior AI programmer Maciej Celmer entitled "Heat, MaxTac, and Blockades: Police System, in Cyberpunk 2077 and more." In the talk, Celmer went into a lot of interesting detail about how exactly Cyberpunk 2077's police chase system was revamped following criticism from players that at launch, the system was way too forgiving and unengaging.

The new system, implemented in 2023, was far more dynamic and popular with players. And according to Celmer, it had an unusual inspiration: Pac-Man.

"Remember the game of Pac-Man, and the fact that every ghost had a different approach on how to catch the player?" Celmer said during his talk. "We did a similar thing in our car chases. For instance, one of them can try to reach the player on the shortest possible path, while the other can try to flank him or intercept on the intersection. There are seven different strategies that we applied to our cars with that part of the chase."

We reached out to CD Projekt following the talk to get a little more detail on what Celmer meant. Over email, he confirmed that Pac-Man was one of "many" inspirations for the police chase update, "especially for the designers who came up with the idea. We wanted to surround the player with chasing vehicles but, at the same time, always try to leave at least one 'road to freedom' — basically, a way to escape. However, the situation in Night City, especially during a chase, can be very dynamic, so 'try' is definitely the right word here."

Celmer broke down the aforementioned seven "strategies" that police cars would take in a chase for us too. Each strategy combined a mix of logic for where the vehicle would spawn with its behavior after spawning, and which strategy was used was dependent on the heat level, the state of the police system (relaxed, alerted, or combat) and other factors. From there, cars could also perform different maneuvers depending on the situation, such as ramming, shooting, blocking, overtaking, or aligning with the chased car. The seven strategies were, in Celmer's words:

• Drive towards the player — Move directly toward the player in a straight line. Used in the Alerted state.
• Drive away from the player — Move directly away from the player. Used in the Alerted state.
• Patrol the quadrant — Patrol the area around the player.
• Intersection trap — Try to flank the player at the next intersection.
• Get to the player from anywhere — The aggressive one.
• Search for the player — Perform an initial search around the crime scene. Used in the Alerted state.
• Search from anywhere — A fallback strategy used when we can’t find a suitable spawn point for strategy 6, so the car simply spawns anywhere and begins searching for the player.

The result was, if you look at Cyberpunk 2077's roads from the top down, something like a game of Pac-Man where the ghosts are the police cars chasing the player. In Pac-Man, each ghost has its own strategy it will typically perform, such as Pinky trying to ambush the player or Blinky chasing him directly. "We simply wanted to do something a bit different from other games with similar systems," Celmer said. "The combination of a classic game AI design inspired by Pac-Man seemed like a great fit for implementing police chases in Cyberpunk 2077."

Cyberpunk 2077's turnaround is one of the most dramatic in video game history. After its disastrous launch in December 2020, CD Projekt continued to update the game, and now, as it nears its fifth birthday, it's sitting on an incredible 35 million copies sold. Indeed, Cyberpunk 2077 is currently CD Projekt's main source of revenue.

In a recent financial briefing, CD Projekt said it was “laying the foundations” for Cyberpunk 2, outlining plans to scale up its development teams in Boston, Warsaw, and Vancouver and through to the end of 2027. 135 people were working on Cyberpunk 2 as of October 31, 2025, up from 116 at the end of July.

At GIC Poland, I also chatted with the director of Valor Mortis about difficulty options in Soulslike games and whether Valor Mortis should count as a Soulslike. I also went hands-on with the dog secret agent game Barkour.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.