Hogwarts Legacy a Heated Debate for Gamers and Fans

Ever since J.K. Rowling first came out with her hateful views, fans have been forced to take sides in the debate. Even though there have been pushes to hold her accountable for her actions too many people are still to happy to give her money through buying products where she gets royalties. Her continued financial support has given her support to to lend her voice to others that also support hate speech against certain populations, like Macy Gray (Saad). The battle in the Harry Potter fandom has reached all parts of it, but right now the part getting the most focus is with video games. It is common to see advertisements for the game Hogwarts Legacy, and I have seen ads popping up more and more.

Below will be a detailed look at some of the conversations going on around the topic and the points being made.

First, let's take a look at some of the coverage it has been getting in the media lately.

2/6/23: "Hogwarts Legacy Introduces Harry Potter Series' First Transgender Character" - https://www.gamerevolution.com/news/934065-hogwarts-legacy-trans-character-transgender-sirona-ryan?amp I found this to be very interesting. This actually makes me wonder what control of the Harry Potter universe is being taken from Rowling. Have the studio and other controlling interests managed to find ways around her and what else can they take. Is this also a form of resistance from them? To me this opens many different questions. The only thing I think that could still be improved is if they would have made this a playable character instead of a NPC.

2/6/23: "Hogwarts Legacy: Why are people boycotting one of the biggest games of the year?"- https://news.sky.com/story/amp/hogwarts-legacy-why-are-people-boycotting-one-of-the-biggest-games-of-the-year-12790384 This article shows a little of what people who are supporting the boycott are dealing with. When it said that one of the lesser comments that Maysa Pritilata has received was "It's people like you that are making the world a worse place" it shows how the bullies are trying to make themselves the victims. I have seen some of the worse comments and have even been the target of them over the Gina Carano issue. People are horrible to those that try to stand up for the rights of others and has a global society we allow it. At the same time I felt that this article was very biased and in support of her. One way to tell this is that you saw only messages from people who are supporting the game and they didn't include any that showed people talking about how they have been impacted by her. This article tried to appear to walk a line, but to readers it is easy to see which side the author is on. This did at least lead me to look up Pritilata's article.

2/3/23: "Hogwarts Legacy community reinstates three-year-old ban on discussing J.K. Rowling"- https://www.gamesradar.com/hogwarts-legacy-community-reinstates-three-year-old-ban-on-discussing-jk-rowling/  This article makes the point that the conversions around J.K. Rowling quickly breaks down into bigoted language. I have seen conversations on line do this myself. People will say something like they don't support her views and then they are quickly attacked with all types of hate speech. To be truthful I will admit that I have also experienced this personally. There are die hard fans that will support her no matter what she does and this doesn't even count the ones that do actually support and share her views. This article also points out that some players are purposefully targeting certain players to just get a rise out of them instead of keeping things just about the game. This is a form of active bullying that actually needs to be addressed in a much stricter way by admins of the games. The admins are aware of what is going on and they only have a ban against talking about it? I think they need to have stricter things in place for bullying like bans.

1/19/23: "Instead of buying Hogwarts Legacy, protesters raise over $5K by donating the price of the game to trans charity"- https://www.gamesradar.com/instead-of-buying-hogwarts-legacy-protesters-raise-over-dollar5k-by-donating-the-price-of-the-game-to-trans-charity/ This is what I mean when I saw that fans need to speak with their money. I hadn't even heard of this movement until I started researching for this article and following all of the different links in articles. I wish that this would have gotten a lot more coverage because it shows that there is active resistance going on. If you would like to help support this movement the link is: https://tiltify.com/@bobawitch/support-mermaids-not-jk . Another good point that this article makes is that the voice actors had done their job before a lot of the stuff about Rowling came out. At that time the world of Harry Potter was still an inviting escape for for everyone and could be enjoyed guilt free.

Below are some older articles around the issue that shows this conversation has been going on for awhile.

8/12/22: "Hogwarts Legacy will miss 2022, launch in February 2023 instead"- https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/hogwarts-legacy-release-date/ This article talks about the game being delayed and very top level of the issues around it. 

5/21/22: "Three clear reasons to boycott the upcoming Hogwarts Legacy video game"- https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/hogwarts-legacy-jk-rowling-wizarding-world-antisemitism-gamergate/ Not all of her points I agree with. First the whole thing about the goblins. People have been linking her goblins to depictions of Jews, but goblins have a very deep place in folklore, and not just of Europe. Many cultures around the world have different versions of goblins and not all of those cultures have been impacted by views of Jews. I feel like this is a bit of a stretch and the only way to know for sure is if she comes out and says that she created them based off Jews, otherwise they are just a folklore creature that she choose to use. There is always the idea that folklore was inspired by something, but goblins are too widespread to have been developed to be Jews. I've always thought that some times dig into the meaning of things too much in books. Sometimes the door is just blue. I wish the article would have been laid out better with the points clearly bolded or something. There was a lot of rambling. I only really saw 2 reasons and they were not clearly presented.

3/17/22: "Hogwarts Legacy Will Be Released This Holiday"- https://www.ign.com/articles/hogwarts-legacy-release-holiday-2022 With this one we know that it didn't make the holiday release date. Even at this point Warner Bros. was worrying about her connection to the game and how it will be viewed. This actually makes me think to another article I saw recently where I saw that they might be selling their rights to Disney for Harry Potter. I think they are tired of dealing with the nightmare that Rowling has become for them. At the same time I do not understand why Disney would want to pick up something as dirty as the Harry Potter world has become unless they know a way to cut her out of the picture. If they could do that I think a lot of people would return to the Potter fold. Myself included. I really liked the Harry Potter stories and fandom, but I hold how you treat people higher then any fandom because fandoms are not the real world. The other thing this article talks about is that the game would allow for the creation of transgender characters. I haven't heard much else on this and now the finished product seems to only have 1 NPC transgender character. I think the final product fell short of what people were hoping for.

Next, I want to look at the game. So without buying the game myself this is a little hard since I have to go off what others say and off the marketing materials/main website.

As the last article had stated, there had been a point where people thought that there would be playable transgendered characters or a way to personalize your character so. This seemed to have not happened and then there developed a focus on a NPC transgender character. It makes me wonder if Rowling had influence on changing this or if it was just too difficult for the game designers to complete with everything else that was going on with the game design. If it was the first, would people ever be told the truth? Who knows.

Looking at the different social media sites that are linked to the main website, I couldn't find anything about them addressing the controversy, showing support for people impacted, or saying that they do not join with Rowling in her position. They seemed to just focus on the game material itself like they were pretending that nothing around them was happening.

The only thing on their website I could find in the FAQs was:

From: https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-us/faq

So....is it just me or that as they 'try to separate' themselves from her they are basically saying that they still worked with her and they are complimenting her...not really buying what they are trying to do. 

Also the very last one:

From: https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-us/faq

So clear as mud, and highly questionable.

Overall what does all of this mean? To be truthful it just shows that there is a split in people's approval for Rowling and that people are willing to support a creator over the people that she has hurt. I keep telling people to speak with your money and I'm very glad that many are starting to understand that.  As I said above, fandoms are not the real world but they can have real world impacts on people. We need to stop focusing on making a profit and focus on the real human people that are negatively impacted in these debates. There should be no debate, because the human is more important then something made up. 

Also if you want to know more about the whole JK Rowling issue you can check out Geeked Colorado's older article "To Potter or Not to Potter" about the subject at: https://geekedcolorado.blogspot.com/2020/10/to-potter-or-not-to-potter.html

Updates since this post was first published:

2/8/23: "'You're the villain here': Web developer creates site to track streamers who play Hogwarts Legacy, Twitter has a meltdown"- This also shows the bullies getting mad at being called out. If you pay for this game or any related product you are saying with your money/actions that you support Rowling's position no matter what you say, because you are financially supporting her since she gets a cut of everything that is licensed. If you want to by Harry Potter stuff either buy unlicensed (could be legal issues there) or from fan artists where she will not get one cent. These gamers are mad that they are being called out for what they are making public. If they don't want to be called out for their actions then they should quietly play the game and not stream it to the world. They are showing the world that they support Rowling. The one thing that is sad is that this game is so popular. It shows how popular the hate of specific groups is and how the people buying the game don't care about the human impact that has. https://www.sportskeeda.com/amp/esports/news-you-re-villain-here-web-developer-creates-site-track-streamers-play-hogwarts-legacy-twitter-meltdown

This here is another person that can clearly lay out the issue with people who are support Rowling's views through buying her products. This information is out there and it's not like people buying the game are not aware. They are fully aware that they are supporting hate speech by buying the game. Reposted from Facebook feed.

Also watch this TikTok, it also talks about this subject looking at different parts of it: https://www.tiktok.com/@patloller/video/7197455548239891758?_r=1&_t=8ZihUedOs2g

This is from Rowling herself saying that her royalty checks supports her views:

From: Rowling's Twitter account.

2/8ish/23: here's an article where the author is trying to talk about something they really don't understand- bullying. The is the classic move of bullies playing the victim when being held accountable for their actions and getting the bite back from them choosing to support Rowling. It has already been established, even by Rowling herself, that her royality checks is people showing support for her views. This means that these gamers are being held accountable for supporting her hate speech and they just don't like it. https://fandomwire.com/its-not-worth-getting-bullied-endlessly-major-streamers-already-avoiding-harry-potter-game-hogwarts-legacy-due-to-relentless-cyber-bullying/

Works Cited

Saad, Nardine. "J.K. Rowling backs Macy Gray's anti-trans remarks about what makes 'a woman'," Los Angeles Times, 7/5/2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2022-07-05/macy-gray-catalog-jk-rowling-transphobic-comments?fbclid=IwAR0Y_FKq_6cvTpiQ978xvWGCDL3ri4Mrx8o6PAN2uCxt2BfM3L1x89Jdlh8

Top Picture From: https://fingerguns.net/reviews/2023/02/06/hogwarts-legacy-review-the-whole-hog-warts-and-all/

Additional Updates

3/3/23: "Popular Vtuber Pikamee Retires Following Hogwarts Legacy Controversy"- This feels like someone that could not take the responsibility for their actions and goes back to the bullies trying to appear victimized for being called out. At least this one seems like they are trying to take the graceful way out by stepping back for their ability to influence others negatively. https://kotaku.com/pikamee-vtuber-hogwarts-legacy-stream-twitch-youtube-1850178628