Abandonware Scam or Legitimate Re-Release? Lucinda Green’s Equestrian Challenge is available on Steam now, but raising suspicions
A new release of an old horse game is raising suspicions in the community: Let’s take a quick look at what we know so far.
Lucinda Green’s Equestrian Challenge is a classic sports simulation game from the golden age of horse games, published for Windows and PlayStation 2 in 2006. Its developer IR Gurus, later also known as Transmission Games was an Australian developer with a significant portfolio of sports games, action games and equestrian simulation games. Several other well known titles such as Mary King’s Riding Star, The Saddle Club – Willowbrook Stables and the original Equestriad all originated from this studio.
The game was originally published by Red Mile Entertainment, with additional international releases managed by Empire Interactive under the Xplosiv brand name. While the game’s critical reception was mixed at the time, Lucinda Green’s Equestrian Challenge remains a beloved reference among horse game fans and community members for its relatively complex and serious approach to horse riding, instead of the kid-friendly adventure fun of many competitors.
Initial Announcement
The steam page for a re-release of the game has been online since 2021. Long enough, that a Steam forum thread has received numerous comments over the past years wondering if the game was ever going to be released. A factor that raised further suspicion was that the site uses a Let’s Play video from TSM Channel on YouTube – visible watermark and all – rather than an official trailer or newly recorded gameplay footage. This original listing also misspelled the title as “Lucinda Equestrian Challenge”, omitting the famous rider’s last name in the text but including it in the logo. In short: it didn’t look particularly legitimate, and seemed unlikely to ever actually release.
This link now redirects to the same steam page, but the embed on this message from July 2021 still shows the erroneous version without the last name.
Release Findings
Fast forward to January 2025: against all odds, Lucinda Green’s Equestrian Challenge becomes available for purchase, and promptly gathers a handful of mixed reviews from nostalgic horse game players due to technical issues. Players report horse textures not loading on higher graphics settings as well as crashes. These issues are game-breaking for some and highly irritating for others (and may justify a refund), but they’re not inherently a sign for illegitimacy.
Setting the graphics to maximum via the video configuration option (videoquery.exe in your installed files) results in a complete white-out of the game’s textures
Completely white or completely black horses appear to occur if you launch the game through Steam (instead of just launching the .exe) and have graphics set to anything other than minimum.
Note: the texture issues, where your horse is entirely black or white if your graphics preset is anything other than ‘minimum’ can be bypassed by launching the game from the .exe file rather than clicking play in the Steam launcher, at least for me.
What’s interesting is a closer look at the game’s files however: The files of the steam game are identical (apart from one missing url shortcut file) to a version that has been available for download from abandonware sites. Upon closer examination, the Steam game’s files contain hints that they were cracked by HATRED, a warez group active around the time of LGEC’s original release.
I ran the cracked version and the steam version through WinMerge and found that they’re identical.
Opening the .exe file in 7zip reveals a file called HATRED, indicating a cracked version
This could mean one of two things:
Someone from the original dev or publishing team or someone who holds the IP rights after the original studio’s closure decided to do a low-effort re-release by uploading a cracked version to Steam.
Someone is scamming horse game players by selling them abandonware and keeping the profits.
Option 1 isn’t entirely impossible: Making changes to old games to ensure compatibility on modern hardware and operating systems is no small feat, and it would not surprise me that even for a professional team with access to the original files, using a cracked version is vastly more feasible than getting the original code to properly compile again and run without the originally required CD.
When we take into account the lack of professionalism evident in the appropriated gameplay footage, initial title typo and utter lack of any other communication, I’m inclined to consider option 2 more likely.
Ownership Intransparency
LGEC’s Steam page lists IR Gurus Interactive Pty Ltd. as its developer and Empire Interactive as its publishers, despite both companies (as well as original publisher Red Mile Entertainment) having apparently closed their doors in or around 2009. Steam’s backend doesn’t appear to prevent game creators from using company names that can’t be verified, meaning any unassociated person could technically be using these companies’ names.
The only other game by the same publisher on Steam also appears to be a barely functional re-release of a previously abandoned game, judging from the reviews.
Game companies closing down and the rights to their intellectual property ending up at previously unrelated firms is far from unheard of in the games industry. Where precisely the rights to a defunct company’s games and brands end up is usually not public knowledge outside of particularly high profile cases. It’s absolutely possible that this re-release is a hobby project of an original creator, or a test case from whoever has the IP rights nowadays, kept on the down-low. At the moment, I cannot find any concrete evidence either way.
The Mane Quest has reached out to some of the game’s original creators as well as the support email on the Steam Page for further insight. This article will be updated accordingly if any new information is found. I’ve also posted on the Steam Forums in hopes of clarification.
UPDATE 2025/01/10: I’ve been contacted by Mike Fegan, former CEO of Transmission Games, the studio that developed this game in the 00s. He confirms my suspicions that this listing is illegitimate: “I do not believe the IP rights for this game were ever sold during RME liquidation,” Mike writes, referring to the game’s publisher. “And I can certainly confirm that Lucinda Green has not received any royalties for the use of her name since then as I have worked with her on another game project.”
Conclusion
So should you buy the game as someone looking for your nostalgic horse game fix? Well, you’re almost certainly not supporting the people who originally made it, and you can find the exact same version of the game on abandonware sites such as Old Games Download, at your own risk. We simply can’t tell at the moment who the revenue is really going to, apart from the share going to Steam itself.
The Steam Game has around 500 followers and 25 reviews and sells for under 5 USD, so if this is a scam, the person behind it is unlikely to amass vast riches. Whether you’re more comfortable giving your money to this effectively anonymous listing rather than downloading from elsewhere amid all this uncertainty is up to you. But I myself will be refunding my Steam copy once I’m done digging through the files.