Hogwarts Legacy Finds Success Despite Controversy

Hogwarts Legacy was perhaps the most anticipated game of the last year and one of the most anticipated games of all time. The game, based on JK Rowling’s best-selling series Harry Potter, has a huge fan base behind it that love the “Wizarding World.” The game throws you into the Hogwarts experience as a 5th year student that just transferred in. It is an open world game where you get to run around exploring the world of Hogwarts, learn new spells to take down enemies, and meet other students along the way. It sounds like a dream come true for fans of the Wizarding World, but the game doesn’t come without controversy.

 While the game is not created by or written by JK Rowling, she is linked to it, as she still receives royalties from the game. So what is the problem with the game being linked to Rowling? In recent years, Rowling has been on Twitter tweeting and retweeting things that many people saw as transphobic. on June 4, 2020, she retweeted a post of a story that used the term “People who Menstruate,” thinking that the writer should have used the word “women” instead. Rowling tweeted, “‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” The trans community didn’t like this, feeling as if she was excluding trans women from the title of women. She then had many other tweets in which she stated that she stood with the trans community while saying that she thinks her life has been shaped by being a woman. She also tweeted “TERF wars,” TERF meaning Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, adding reason for people to stand against her. 

However, despite the trans community boycotting the game, saying that anyone who purchases the game is transphobic, Hogwarts legacy is by far the bestselling game of the year. It held 4 of the top 5 bestselling spots on Steam, with the pre-released standard and digital deluxe editions both being the top two, and the people who bought it after release are the next two. So while many have pushed back against the game, it is still one of the most successful games of all time.