Hogwarts Legacy has already sold over 12 million copies. Good job, everyone - we worked together to show that pesky woke boycott who’s boss and stuck up for the little billionaire and the multinational corporation. The continued acceptance of JK Rowling’s universe and its transphobic baggage is a clear sign that gamers are willing to throw aside societal progress and the support of minority groups if it means playing the next big video game.
February was an avalanche of moral compromises from
fellow critics, friends, and family. I watched as they bargained with their personal worth as a trans ally if they decided to buy this game, their excitement outweighing the pleads of us fighting for human rights on the sidelines. Here at TheGamer,
we decided against reviewing or guiding Hogwarts Legacy. Our coverage instead serves to inform the greater conversation and shine a light on how its potential success and the ongoing boycott speaks to a far larger societal issue.
But with how rampant transphobia is becoming in today’s world and the tangible connection it has with the Wizarding World, you have to ask gamers whether they purposefully cast aside the red button issue in favour of their own enjoyment. If the buck doesn’t stop with the public treatment of an entire minority group, where exactly does it?
The success of Hogwarts Legacy was never really down to how many copies it sold or the overall Metacritic score. Its
real victory is that it was received with open arms despite the creator of its universe demonising trans people and widening a divide that is now worming its way through everyday bias and the minds of politicians and the public. Trans people like me have become a sick and twisted bargaining chip for upcoming elections and a topic for right-wing rags to pull out for a quick and easy hit piece to stoke up outrage built on a sensationalist chorus of lies.
Battle lines were drawn between trans people and Rowling in the lead up to the release of Hogwarts Legacy. Several outlets and organisations made their stance obvious, while others unfortunately pussy-footed around the sad reality of how big the game was and the profits it will take in with guaranteed traffic and engagement. It was always going to sell. As so many of you are eager to highlight, it is the Harry Potter experience of your dreams and a chance to be the witch or wizard you spent your childhood fantasising about.
Human beings tend to form attachments to media that takes them back to a much simpler time, one where trans people weren’t being murdered on a regular basis while countless uninformed internet dipshits label them as predators obsessed with loitering in toilets.
The real world is changing, yet we refuse to accept that games are too. Transphobia will never exist in a vacuum, and factors everything we say, do, and consume. Hogwarts Legacy is a part of that reality, and one we can’t afford to treat as an exception. Yet this is exactly what’s happened. We bring similar media to task for homophobia or racism, but suddenly this kind of discrimination is excusable? Minority groups don't exist on a tier of indifference dependent on whether actually showing your support gets in the way of a cool video game.
We asked you to cast aside a product to tell corporations that transphobia was a dealbreaker for you, and it turns out it wasn’t. I think Rowling’s views are mainstream enough in the modern era that ignoring them was a complicit acknowledgment on the part of most. To say, “I just love Harry Potter” as you buy the game and donate a few pounds to charity in a spur of the moment admission of guilt isn’t good enough, and it definitely won’t be the last time gamers cast aside their beliefs in favour of short, unfulfilling bursts of fun. Trying to feebly justify to my face how it doesn’t make you a bad person, and you just want to hang out with the homies in charms class should really highlight that perhaps you’re trying to bargain for the wrong side.
Hogwarts Legacy feels like a defining point in the evolution of video games. An adaptation of a property millions grew up on that flirts with the bloated magic of triple-A open world design to conjure up an adventure that to many felt unmissable. It also surfaced an ideological tug of war that so few were ready to reconcile. You don’t have a transphobic bone in your body, there’s no way you’d support Rowling, but she didn’t touch this game, and you simply need to support the developers, and it isn’t fair that the loony leftists are screaming at you. You just wanted to be able to ignore all the consequences of your actions in peace.
On one side sat hollow excuses and transparently performative support, while the other only served to throw trans people under the bus like they always do. What many fail to realise is that refusing to take a stand on transphobia with Hogwarts Legacy makes all forms of activism past, present, and future you cling onto utterly meaningless. It speaks to a spineless rhetoric, an admittance that the agency of minorities can change on a whim to fit your own flippant attitude. I fear this will be the start of more exceptions, showing companies that transphobia is no deterrent to millions excited to indulge in the next big thing.
There was no winning here. After you discount all the awkward noise it becomes a damning indictment of how cowardly gamers can be when faced with doing the right thing. We are all obedient little consumers, desperate for another dose of serotonin that can drown out the fact that LGBTQ+ people are being marginalised, and the world continues to burn. We shouldn’t have to consider human rights, politics, or our own moral worth as an individual when it comes to having fun.
Those who dare to question that or critique you aren’t considerate or constructive, only liberal harassers who want to turn games into a battlefield of ideological progress where everyone loses. That’s never been the case, but with the success of Hogwarts Legacy it feels like we’ve crossed a tangible point of no return where daring to speak up about injustice or do the right thing means you only want to ruin someone’s fun or turn things into a shouting match.
The sales figures and reviews of Hogwarts Legacy don’t mean anything to me, nor can they act as a metric of success that predicts the influence it will have on video games in the years to come. But if we can dismiss one of the most vocal voices of transphobia on the planet if it means having fun, what other lines won’t we be willing to cross? Ignoring a single game in a sea of excellent options as a fairly pedestrian means of supporting trans people is not asking a lot, yet even that proved too much for millions who would rather label us as an annoyance than actually consider where we might be coming from. I dread to think exactly what this excuse of bigotry will enable in the future, and I know that we’ll look back on this mistake with shame.
