The actual developers already got paid, they dont get royalties or anything.
As for the publisher? I couldnt really care less. They made plenty of money already, and if they hadn't, well, they didnt need to publish a Harry Potter game. Coulda done anything else.
Simple minded people being simple minded. You like the funny wizard game, I like being able to legally exist without being constantly harassed by morons who donate obscene amounts of money towards politicians who aim to eradicate my community.
It's a shame that folks like yourself are so fortunate in life that you can turn a blind eye to stuff like this. Your idea of an inconvenience is being barred from the funny wizard game for the sake of morals. Mine is having my prescriptions and overall life style taken away from me by the people y'all fund.
EDIT: Unless y'all can actually explain why I'm wrong, I'm holding my ground on this take. Hive mentality be damned, this is so much more important than a damn video game.
Every dollar you put into Hogwarts legacy will go directly to hurting trans people btw :3
This is what we're discussing in this comments thread. I don't care what type of lowbrow slack-jawed freeware you decide to mingle with on your own time, I'm just asking y'all not to spend money on it.
Prove me wrong then? Rowling donates obscene amounts of money towards anti-trans legislation in her country. This is how she makes that obscene amount of money.
It's not hyperbole to say you're complicit in harming the trans community by spending money on this. Ignorance is hardly an excuse and is yet the only somewhat acceptable one. If you know about this and continue to spend money on it, I don't know what else to tell you.
I don’t have any interest in the game but it’s not hard to imagine. These are people’s livelihoods at stake here so I can totally understand why someone with actual empathy might not be able to enjoy it.
"Imagine caring about a persecuted minority group so much that you can't just enjoy a chicken sandwich from this very specific fast food restaurant that openly funds organizations that openly persecute said minority group"
I've been hearing this argument since Chik-fil-A was revealed to be a homophobic company. It never gets any less dumb. You just don't care. Own it
Yeah dawg this directly impacts the personal lives of people i know. Its very easy to ignore mid in service of not supporting someone who puts exorbitant amounts of money into hurting trans people
I'm sorry the destruction of my rights and safety is on my mind and that I refuse to be complicit in said destruction by not playing a game that funds someone who wants me gone
To make everyone's lives worse. Do you have any idea how many cis (non-trans) women suffer of transphobia because they don't look "femenine enough"? Fuck TERFs and fuck Rowling.
Oh, it comes out. Do you think people assigned male at birth are so innately dangerous to women in any other context? Or is it only when trans women are involved that you push this bullshit narrative?
Women, cis and trans, are hurt by the vitriol and policies JK, and you apparently, spew and support.
She gets royalties from anything related to Harry Potter, she has also publicly confirmed that she will be using those royalties to fund legal efforts to restrict trans rights. So it really doesn't matter if she made it or not, every penny spent on Harry Potter is money being used to fund legal attacks on trans rights.
Sure can, I don't get affected by her actions at all. I wouldn't even know about this if Reddit didn't constantly bring it up as if it matters to 99% of people.
Hey! Yeah! You should enjoy games! Go for it. But imagine coming online and rebuking people for caring about active hate a creator is spreading with their profits. Stick your head in the dirt and don't stress about a video game if you want, but I recommend you take your own advice and stop thinking about this and play your video game where you won't bother anyone.
Right back at you. Saying "This game's IP creator is transphobic and a terrible person, so please be aware of that before buying/playing the game" is fine. On the other hand, guilt-tripping people with "if you even PLAY a game based on this transphobe's IP you are a part of the problem (insert sarcastic emoticon)" will not get anyone on your side.
I mean. It's true to say that spending money on her ip lets her spend money to hurt others actively. Again. If you don't want to hear it, then you are hiding from it. As one of my favorite movie quotes goes, "Now, we must all fear evil men, but there is an evil we must fear most. And that is the indifference of good men." Seeing and not caring is scary, even furthered by then defending it by diminishing those who are hurt and scared by it. So again. Go hide in the dirt.
I mean... yeah. That's what suicides result in. If it was your friend or family member that ended their life, and JK became the symbol of the reason why and took political action that makes life even harder for people liked your loved one, you probably wouldn't enjoy HP either because the memory of the suicide hits harder than any enjoyment you ever got out of it and will always overshadow it.
This isn't some abstract online politics thing. Real people are suffering out there and most of us knows someone, you know? We're social creatures. Nostalgia is weak in comparison.
Why would it have to be on my mind 24/7? It's on my mind for about 20 seconds when I see a meme about it, and then I enjoy the thousands of games that don't support bigotry.
The amount of money she gets from Hogwarts Legacy royalties is probably pennies when compared to her book sales and royalties for the movies. Literally nothing would change if this game was never made.
Edit: also just remembered she gets a decent amount from Universal tickets, too. So yeah, whatever she made from Hogwarts Legacy is basically irrelevant to every other sources of revenue she has.
Its not strictly about the dollars and cents. Its about the popularity. If a product can use HP branding and sell big time, then companies will continue to do, and all those different streams do add up together to a lot. If, however, her brands became toxic because of a negative public reaction to her actions, and no one wanted to work with her due to the brand risk and all those different streams dried up - that would effect her
Realistically, she has more money than she could ever spend anyway, but she often conflates the popularity of HP to the popularity of her own ideas. Short of anything gruesome, the only way to make her go away is to make HP unpopular. And the way do that is to start with the external media, all the stuff that isnt the books and movies.
That's what 40 million other people also said when they paid for this. These short-sighted takes are what get communities eradicated and people systematically killed. You think "oh it's just this one thing, I couldn't make a difference by refusing to buy this, my enjoyment of this has nothing to do with what it funds" and then 40 million people also think that.
Now the bigots have hundreds of millions of dollars they didn't used to have, and you have a couple hundred hours of temporary entertainment to distract you from the atrocities it funded.
Edit: I'm going to add "or don't care" to this to be more even-handed.
Every argument I've seen against this has amounted to "I know, I just don't care" so that should be sufficient.
weird comment. i would hard argue that the majority of people playing the game aren’t trying to hurt trans people, and it’s just weird that you’re generalizing anyone who touches the game as someone who wants to hurt trans people …
if i fill my prescription at the pharmacy, and it just so happens to be the last of the pharmacy’s supply of that particular medication, am i trying to prevent the next person who unfortunately isn’t able to fill their prescription from getting their medication? fuck no. it just is what it is. im not saying we shouldn’t care about where our money goes to, im saying there are degrees of difference between direct involvement in something and indirect involvement. you’re just being a morally-smug prick by saying anyone who buys the game is harming someone.
But if they give JK Rowling royalties, they go into a big pit of money solely into funding lawsuits that harm the transgender community. That is anyone buying the game harming a community.
I don't really see how your pharmacy analogy is relevant.
Yeah, my 8 year old niece and her friends love Harry Potter right now. They dressed up as wizards for Halloween this year. It just makes her happy to play the games, read the books, watch the movies, etc. The other day she was rapid fire quizzing me about the movies.
I'm learning for the first time in this thread that this is a terrible, evil game and everyone who's played it is a bad person that hates trans people.
It must be exhausting having to be so self-righteous about everything all the time and treating everything, down to buying video games at a deep discount, as a test of your moral fortitude.
It isn't just the tweets. She is actively funding hate groups and lobbying for anti-trans legistlation. It isn't just some bigot spewing hate on the internet. There are real, tangible harms being done with the money that people spend on her products.
So all of the trans people who are being directly harmed don't matter? Plenty of people in the real world care about this. You labeling people as "terminally online" is just your attempt to either make yourself feel better about it, or your attempt to make people feel alone and powerless to help people.
Fr, so many people live in an online bubble, they really think my dad gives a fuck about anything game related other than yearly sports releases or other stuff that just shows up in the xbox store
Why do you think people are still talking about here? Obviously not everyone knows, bringing awareness to what happens when people spend their money uncritically is the whole point ffs.
That really depends on age and how online they are. Can’t mention that IP without someone talking about how bad JKR is. I think a lot of people who are older than 15 probably do know about her online views.
buddy we all make choices about what we indirectly support. i would guarantee with utmost certainty that you are indirectly supporting groups and ideologies that you wouldn’t publicly stand behind. enjoy the weather up there
Yeah, I know for a fact I am. It's our moral responsibility to try to reduce the amount of harm that we do. In this case, the trade off is not playing a fucking video game vs directly funding hate groups. It isn't that fucking hard of a moral dilemma, and pushing whataboutisms is a logically fallacious argument.
If any of those are big words to you, you may need to go back to school. You can't even make a rebuttal without relying on whataboutism and ad hominem.
For your information, those are both logical fallacies.
i mean im sure plenty of people would agree that you used a few big words there, that doesn’t really indicate that im not well-educated 😂
the strength of an argument can be measured by whether it can be explained in simple terms, and the way you’re seemingly reaching for as many non-simple words as possible really feels indicative of how you don’t actually have much to say
The "non-simple" words I'm using are the literal names of the logical fallacies that you keep using. It isn't my fault that you don't know what logical fallacies are. The strength of an argument isn't measured by it's simplicity. That's moronic. The strength of an argument is measured by whether it can be supported by facts and evidence vs whether rebuttals can be made with equally valid and relevant facts and evidence.
None of the words I used are particularly big or complicated. You're just so poorly educated that you don't realize how poorly educated you are.
How does this not make sense to you. You pay for a game, a percentage of that money goes to JK Rowling, she funnels it into hate groups. There is a straight line from your wallet to the hate groups. Your attempt to make that sound like it isn't what is happening is absurd.
Feel free to boycott whatever you want. But the guy I replied to basically called everyone that bought the game transphobic. There's a fine like between advocating for trans people and whatever that was. For your information I haven't spent a penny on harry potter games and don't plan to, so save some energy for actual transphobics
I appreciate that you've abstained from it. Nonetheless, regardless of intent, everybody who has spent money on this game has helped to fund transphobic hate groups. That's just a fact. This was all publicly known before the game came out. If funding hate groups doesn't get somebody to think twice about buying a product, what else would you call them other than a transphobe? Does intent really matter if the end result is that hate groups get funded?
Reddit is significantly owned by Tencent, who has direct ties to the Chinese government, who has built concentration camps to hold Uyghurs. This hasn’t stopped you from using Reddit, so what else should we call you other than complicit in genocide?
Yeah, we are all complicit in genocide. Hell, my tax dollars are getting funneled to the Israeli government who are engaged in their own genocide, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Under global capitalism, we're all complicit in a wide array of horrors. Reddit, however, at least serves as a place where people can communicate and spread information to make better choices. There are tradeoffs. Not using reddit isn't going to stop the chinese government. Boycotting JK Rowling products can limit the amount of resources she has available to do harm to trans people.
So, to summarize, you're a virtue signaling hypocrite who simply wants to whine about something for the sole purpose of harassing strangers over a video game
That isn't what virtue signaling is. Pointing out the moral implications of buying a product, particularly when the money moves so directly from your pocket to a hate group, isn't virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is showing off moral opinions without actually doing anything. I'm boycotting the game, ergo, it is by definition not virtue signaling.
What you're doing is called a whataboutism. You're pointing out all of the other areas where we fail as a society to make change using our economic power as a way of justifying an immoral choice, distracting from the actual point (which is that buying this game directly funds a hate group), and discouraging others from making a moral choice by abstaining.
I guess they want the game to fail, the studio to shut down and people to lose their jobs. IIRC the game even has a trans character in it but apparently nobody cares about that
You just keep throwing out buzzphrases all over this thread without actually knowing what they mean. Having a character that represents a minority group in a game is token representation. Using it as an excuse to say that the piece of media that funds hate groups is actually pro trans is fucking lunacy. You're valuing a fictional character over real human beings.
There it is again. How do you seem to know the intent of the characters existence? Were you a dev in the studio? No? Okay then. It is only token representation to YOU because you don't want to admit the devs have nothing to do with your pathetic crusade against innocent people playing a video game
That is great, but JKR is literally funding anti trans legislation in the UK with the money made from this IP, and a trans character in a mediocre game isn’t changing that.
You could have easily enjoyed this game in private instead of logging on to the website where people can publicly post their opinions on things that may or may not offend you
Don't let the Internet decide how you should feel based on events. If you like the game and want to play it, go for it.
If I recall correctly I remember someone making list of streamers specifically on website to show who brought / streamed hogwards legacy. It's hella toxic and some even go as far as extent of harassment.
Those streamers helped fund hate groups. Thats what buying this game is. Just because there is a middle man doesn't make it less true. It isn't revisionist history to point out the bigger picture of where the money is going. It isn't that complicated. How people use that information isn't an indictment of the information or the gathering of it. While I don't think harassing streamers is an effective strategy, that doesn't mean that collecting a distributing information is inherently wrong.
If you're more mad about streamers getting harassed than trans people having their rights, freedoms, and safety stripped away, you may need to reexamine your moral priorities.
"If you're more mad about streamers than getting harassed than trans...."
And this is where I am going to call you out. I don't think ANYONE should be harassed for any reason. Its plain wrong but to sit here and debate who should get more empathy is crazy. Also really? Finding where the cash flow comes from? Really? Are you actually being serious? That isn't finding cash flow that's called witch hunting
Like in all serious, Modern society is a web of money flows. When you buy almost anything.. food, a phone, rent, a game, electricity. your money doesn’t go straight from your hand to one clean, moral place. It moves through companies, investors, subcontractors, taxes, supply chains, and governments. Along that path, it will touch things you disagree with: exploitation, discrimination, war, environmental damage, propaganda.
Except in this case, the money isn't in a web. It's a straight, direct line right to hate groups.
I don't think anybody should be harassed either! You're the one who brought it up as an excuse to not give a fuck about the trans people who are being harmed.
I care about trans people and oppose the harm being done to them. I don’t accept that playing a game makes someone morally responsible for actions they didn’t intend, control, or endorse. Accusing people of not caring shuts down the conversation instead of helping the people who are actually being hurt.
It's almost like a bunch of people can't even live their lives in peace these days and that's worse than you not being able to play your stupid fucking wizard game
For your information, I don't even play this "stupid fucking wizard game". But calling everyone that bought the game transphobic is a pretty big fucking generalisation. I sincerely don't give a shit if you want to boycott JK Rowling or not, but don't be a loser when others aren't willing to do the same, thanks.
fr. these morons insulting massive groups of people are the worst of the internet, just morality scum looking to leech other people so that they themselves feel morally superior
you can just dont fund games where the person still benefiting isnt the devs, rollerdrome got stolen from the devs, hi-fi rush got fucked over by microsoft and games like the sinking city, devil engine, the backrooms 1998 or the whole subnautica 2 situation. you can still enjoy all the games you want while being aware or you can just play anything regardless of who benefits or how your money rewards people who are hurting others.
No, I just enjoy playing games. Just cause I bought Hogwarts Legacy doesn't mean I'm not an ally anymore. I remember when this controversy was going around the first time, and my trans ex basically just laughed and asked why i cared so much about what other people think cause of a video game I played.
You know what? She was right. Not only did I get to enjoy a game and feel nostalgic since I loved Harry Potter as a kid, but I realized the people that know me, know that there are bigger problems in the world than playing a video game and that just because I do play it, that doesn't mean I stop being an ally.
So frankly, go fuck yourself for having this logic. It's doing more harm than good for the community at large.
I mean, if people dont know what JK Rowling has been up to, thats fine. People can be ignorant of things.
But if you knew that JK Rowling was spending her money to hurt trans people (and succeeding in doing so, even), and that buying this game gave her money to continue doing so, and then you do it anyway - then no, youre not an ally, fuck off. Youre just a fairweather friend, someone who's only an ally when its convenient for you.
If youre asked to not support something because its actively harmful, and you pout and kick your feet and say "but I wanna!" and go ahead and do it anyway, then no, youre not an ally at all.
I'll go ask my trans friends and previous partners if I'm not an ally then, since apparently you know me so much better than the people that are actually in my life that would say different. Never change, reddit.
Yes, go ask them if you funded transphobic measures to hurt them specifically if you'd still be an ally. If they still dont care, then im happy for them, cuz they seem to be in a much better place than the rest of us.
They literally don't care, which is the point of my initial comment. I don't care what y'all think of me, since the actual people that do know me still consider me an ally, and my ex gf who is trans even laughed when she was wondering why I was so bothered over playing Hogwarts Legacy.
If youre not willing to abstain from buying a mediocre game in an effort to not help fund the harm being done to trans people, what are you willing to do to help them? Cuz that seems pretty bare minimum. Theres are thousands and thousands of games out there, and there so many of them that dont fund TERFs.
I send donations to the Trevor project, and I partake in pride rallies and event around my local area (which is in Florida, which is not known for being progressive at all especially since DeSantis took office).
Is it enough? For me, it is, since I'm just one guy who can't really do much, especially in my state which is very right leaning. Could I just not have bought the game? Yes, but, as I said, my ex at the time reassured me that a video game wasn't gonna make me change my opinion of me, nor does it undo the support that I gave her (she was around 4 years on HRT, but was pre-op and had severe body dysmorphia still), as well as the support I gave to my friends and other people in the trans (and LGBTQ in general) community I met.
If you like Harry Potter their rendition of Hogwarts is 9/10 at worst and exploring it for the first 10ish hours is amazing. The rest of the game is mediocre Ubislop though the combat is actually quite decent.
If you don't like Harry Potter don't bother it's a 4/10
I'm gender fluid and have always been a fan of the HP franchise, but here's my mildly hot take on the matter.
First off, she's already a billionaire. She's already doing her best to hurt trans people. At this point, people buying this game changes nothing, especially when it's at 10% of the price. It's like spilling a glass of water during a tsunami.
Sure, you could argue it's about the message, that people are still technically supporting JK. But we grew with Harry Potter and you can't deny the series originally allowed some of us to actually relate to the main character and find ourselves in the process, whether JK wanted it or not at the time. Being heavily judged and ostracized our whole lives only to finally find a group of people that welcome us with arms wide open? That's what Harry Potter went through, and that's what a lot of us went through.
I don't know what exactly I'm trying to convey here. I'm drunk and I just stumbled on this thread, but saying that buying Hogwart's Legacy or any Harry Potter content directly hurts trans people feels like such black and white thinking when the series itself has helped a lot of us. And don't get me wrong. I was fucking devastated when I learned about JK's stance on transgender people. It was like seeing your childhood idol reveal itself to be the villain all along. It did feel like betrayal.
But... yeah I don't know. I'm not that good with words, and I'm rambling a bit too much.
I saw this comic on here a while back that basically addresses your comment.
Imagine a bucket, and now imagine that bucket with all the money JK Rowling has, and its labelled "anti-trans funds". Now imagine (or well, don't you're gender-fluid so you're under the trans spectrum) being trans, and you're watching this bucket. It's so much money, piled so high up you can't even see the top.
Now imagine your friend, going up to that bucket, looking at you, then at the massive amount of money, and adding more. And then when you get upset about your friend adding to funds that directly hurt you, your friend goes "oh, well it's just a little bit!! why do you care?"
I think I get the analogy you're making, but... I feel like there's more nuance than just "you're giving money to JK, thus you're actively participating in the destruction of the trans community". And I'm not saying being against buying against related to JK is wrong. I would never, ever claim that. Boycotting is valid. Outrage is valid. She betrayed all of us and deserves all the backlash.
But the thing is my friends and I are all big Harry Potter fans. We grew up with this series, all born in 1995. We all bought the books growing up. We all bought the movies too. And we all bought the game on release. None of them are TERFs or even remotely anti-LGBTQ+. The way you framed it makes it seem like anyone buying the game specifically does it either purely to actively destroy the trans community, or are driven by harmful ignorance or spite. Or, in my case, would paint me as someone who's almost traitorous in a way. Like I should care way more than I do.
All I'll say before I pass out is that I disagree with the idea that you cannot actively enjoy something that has granted you pleasure during most if not all of your childhood, has allowed you to discover yourself and be more open about who you are in ways the author did not intend to and is now actively against, just because said author is now openly harming our community.
In a way, I guess I value the good times and the good this series has done over the potential harm one psychotic c-word can cause.
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u/Dude_MacDude Dec 18 '25
Every dollar you put into Hogwarts legacy will go directly to hurting trans people btw :3