Horses left Santa Ragione $42,000 in debt after Steam and Epic bans

Santa Ragione has revealed that Horses — their 2025 surrealist horror game banned from both Steam and Epic Games — left the studio $42,000 in debt. The studio shared a full financial breakdown in an official press release provided to Kotaku.

Horses moved 30,000 copies across GOG, Itch, and Humble, generating around $100,000 in revenue — respectable numbers for a niche indie title. But only $8,000 of that actually reached Santa Ragione. The breakdown: $30,000 went to director Andrea Lucco Borlera for years of work on the project, $62,000 went to private funders covering their $50,000 investment plus a return, and the remaining $8,000 stayed with the studio as a first step toward recovering $50,000 in self-funded development costs. Studio co-founder and director Pietro Righi Riva confirmed in a follow-up email that this leaves Santa Ragione $42,000 in the hole.

The Steam and Epic bans cut the game off from its largest potential audiences, and the alternative storefronts — while willing to carry it — simply don't have the same reach. That gap between $100,000 in gross revenue and $8,000 in studio income tells the story pretty clearly.

Santa Ragione has been unusually transparent throughout the Horses saga, and this financial disclosure continues that pattern. What the studio does next to address the remaining debt, and whether Horses ever makes it back onto major platforms, remains to be seen.