I was surprised yesterday to realize that Nightingale had patched up on my Steam Deck without a peep from the devs, but I had only to be patient: Inflexion has now dropped a Steam post as well as a video explain what’s up. And what’s up is the co-op survival sandbox RPG’s second birthday since […]

The Ministry of Family and Social Services of Turkey has prepared a draft law, which, if passed, would impose stricter regulations on the operation of Steam, Epic Games Store, and other game stores in the country.

More details: https://gameworldobserver.com/2026/02/02/in-turkey-there-has-been-a-proposal-to-tighten-control-over-steam-and-epic-games-store

HoYoverse just wrapped up a big Honkai: Star Rail Special Program. We’ve been waiting for this one for a couple of weeks now thanks to a delay, but the developer has finally delivered all the news on Version 4.0, which will arrive February 13.

Read more

Arknights: Endfield developer Gryphline has a good reason to celebrate, as the upcoming free-to-play action RPG has achieved yet another milestone. The developer announced today that Endfield already has over 35 million pre-registrations.

Read more

I only learned about Horses, a unique-looking horror title featuring naked men wearing horse masks, when it made the news for getting a Steam ban. It's just been banned from the Epic Store, too, which had me finding out whether the real reason was spooky or just plain dumb.

https://bsky.app/profile/santaragione.com/post/3m6zgqun5us2f

So, the reasoning behind the bans on both storefronts was mature content... of the non-specified type. Maybe because it features things too scary or sexy to even write about? Epic didn't go beyond stating that Horses violates their policies for "Inappropriate" and "Hateful or Abusive Content." Well, Horses shows butt-naked, forcefully anthropomorphized horses, among other possibly sexy or just straight-up terrifying elements, but it's not a pornographic game, nor does it feature any sort of pro-hate stance. It's just puzzling that such a game would get banned like this, but it gets even sillier.

It's especially strange for Steam, a storefront with way too many sex games. At first, the ban seems more reasonable when coming from Epic. This is the company mostly known for Fortnite, a game whose cute aesthetics almost make you forget it's about 100 kids shooting each other until death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYewjNYxV-8

Still, Horses earned an IARC certificate of PEGI 18 and ESRB M, nothing above that, and both Epic and Steam are still overruling it. So, Epic considers Horses "mature content", and that the company explains that it just doesn't sell that kind of stuff, unless, well, let's just use their official statement because there's no way I could make it funnier if I wanted:

"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)."

Santa Ragione, the indie developer studio behind Horses, is aware of how ridiculous this all sounds, so they have a regularly updated explainer of the entire debacle that you can read.

The team only learned of the ban roughly 24 hours before the game's launch. I'm yet to play Horses, but, if most accounts from respected video game outlets that have tried it are to be believed, it's a damn good game, and far from something that should be forbidden. Santa Ragione has since appealed Epic's verdict, but the appeal has been denied.

You can now get Horses on GOG and Itch.io.

The post Why did this mysterious horror game get banned from Steam and now the Epic Games Store? appeared first on Destructoid.

It appears the internet is once again going down with no applause whatsoever. For the third time in about a month, global services are suffering outages, slowdowns, and general connectivity issues, including popular live-service games.

What couldn't have been said of the early 2000s, when everything you owned you could play offline, is now a grim reality. As per Downdetector, nearly every popular gaming and gaming-related service is suffering significant outages, slowdowns, and problems with connection, including games like ARC Raiders, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Palworld, but also Steam and the Epic Games Store.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1p7fbuv/worldwide_web_down_again_huh/

Whereas the last major outage was caused by Cloudflare going down, and a previous one by massive AI-backed DDOS attacks, there does not seem to be a clear cause this time around.

I've even noticed that platforms like Reddit, WordPress, Trello, and others are loading forever, and that was after making sure it wasn't just my wi-fi being dumb.

And it's a crying shame that we live in a world where everything is always online. Sure, the games above are live service multiplayer experiences that could not be otherwise played without an internet connection, but so many other experiences that are broadly single-player are bound to be affected.

Always-online singleplayer games are our reality because publishers simply cannot let us enjoy things off the grid, and so even if a game has no online features, it still has to connect (and can, therefore, crash if stuff like this happens).

The timeline is only getting worse, but if you're among the affected, then check out some of our guides (like the one for ARC Raiders) in case the issues resolve, but you're still stuck in the dark. Literally.

The post For the third time this month, the internet is crashing—your favorite online games included appeared first on Destructoid.

Santa Ragione's horror game, Horses, getting banned on Steam with only vague reasons to back up its ban was an additional tally on the year for Valve getting mixed up in controversy regarding what it allows and what it doesn't allow on Steam. Epic Games Store, seemingly, felt out of the loop, so it decided to join the fray by also disallowing Horses to release on its digital storefront, even though it was previously slated to arrive alongside launches at GOG, Humble, and Itch.io today, December 2, 2025. The difference, however, is typical of the difference between Epic Games Store […]

Read full article at https://wccftech.com/santa-ragione-horses-banned-from-epic-games-store-at-last-minute-steam-ban/

I only learned about Horses, a unique-looking horror title featuring naked men wearing horse masks, when it made the news for getting a Steam ban. It's just been banned from the Epic Store, too, which had me finding out whether the real reason was spooky or just plain dumb.

https://bsky.app/profile/santaragione.com/post/3m6zgqun5us2f

So, the reasoning behind the bans on both storefronts was mature content... of the non-specified type. Maybe because it features things too scary or sexy to even write about? Epic didn't go beyond stating that Horses violates their policies for "Inappropriate" and "Hateful or Abusive Content." Well, Horses shows butt-naked, forcefully anthropomorphized horses, among other possibly sexy or just straight-up terrifying elements, but it's not a pornographic game, nor does it feature any sort of pro-hate stance. It's just puzzling that such a game would get banned like this, but it gets even sillier.

It's especially strange for Steam, a storefront with way too many sex games. At first, the ban seems more reasonable when coming from Epic. This is the company mostly known for Fortnite, a game whose cute aesthetics almost make you forget it's about 100 kids shooting each other until death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYewjNYxV-8

Still, Horses earned an IARC certificate of PEGI 18 and ESRB M, nothing above that, and both Epic and Steam are still overruling it. So, Epic considers Horses "mature content", and that the company explains that it just doesn't sell that kind of stuff, unless, well, let's just use their official statement because there's no way I could make it funnier if I wanted:

"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)."

Santa Ragione, the indie developer studio behind Horses, is aware of how ridiculous this all sounds, so they have a regularly updated explainer of the entire debacle that you can read.

The team only learned of the ban roughly 24 hours before the game's launch. I'm yet to play Horses, but, if most accounts from respected video game outlets that have tried it are to be believed, it's a damn good game, and far from something that should be forbidden. Santa Ragione has since appealed Epic's verdict, but the appeal has been denied.

You can now get Horses on GOG and Itch.io.

The post Why did this mysterious horror game get banned from Steam and now the Epic Games Store? appeared first on Destructoid.