Despite the J.K. Rowling controversy, Hogwarts Legacy is one of the best-selling games in recent memory.
While some video game media outlets have tried to stir up outrage to kick off a widespread boycott, that obviously backfired. Hogwarts Legacy sold over 12 million copies in its first two weeks and conjured up $850 million in revenue for Warner Bros. Games. And yes, Rowling most definitely gets a slice of that.
The gaming media has mostly moved on from the faux outrage, save for sites like The Gamer. Headlines pertaining to Hogwarts Legacy are now almost exclusively about tips, tricks, gameplay, and updates. Very little of the conversation around the game centers on J.K. Rowling’s Twitter drama.
However, there’s been some collateral damage in the months and years leading up to the Harry Potter game’s release.
In their zeal to “cancel” Rowling (and possibly Hogwarts Legacy itself), some activist-minded gaming journos at Polygon and Kotaku tried to link the game’s lead designer Troy Leavitt to Gamergate. After the hit pieces saturated the news feeds, Leavitt stepped down from his position at Avalanche in early 2021.
More recently, one of the voice actors in the game was harassed by the Twitter outrage mob, despite having recorded his lines before Rowling ran afoul of that crowd. Sebastian Croft had to make a full-throated apology for his perceived ‘crime,’ and it’s still unclear where he stands with the stans.
Most heartbreakingly, the community manager for Limited Run Games, Kara Lynne, was terminated for simply tweeting that she was looking forward to playing Hogwarts Legacy. That tweet seemingly angered one lone activist (who has a long documented history of online harassment) and they pored through her tweets, finding one from seven years ago that kinda-sorta-but-not-really supported the termination of Lynne in their eyes.
So now that the game has broken records and proven to be a certifiable, undeniable hit with general audiences and that the same general public is simply stepping over the Rowling controversy… where are the apologies?
Honestly, where are the lawsuits?
The BBC was forced to make not one, but two public apologies for letting defamatory statements about J.K. Rowling slide.
(One of those apologies was on behalf of the editor-in-chief of The Gamer, and weirdly enough, it was the same podcast featuring a ClownfishTV.com contributor, Jakejames Lugo.)
I personally do not think that the companies that tossed their employees overboard to appease the (mostly inconsequential) Twitter outrage mob should get off the hook. People’s lives and livelihoods were wrongly destroyed over a stupid wizard video game.
How ironic it is that this game is being blamed by its detractors for destroying lives.
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