Harry Potter: Hogwarts Legacy allows players to zoom around on broomsticks, master exotic spellbooks, and break bread with their fellow students on the castle grounds. There are millions of Harry Potter fans on the planet, and after years of middling movie tie-ins and app-store flotsam, Portkey Games promised the first full-throated, big-budget embrace of the Wizarding World.
Unfortunately, the author and primary rights holder of the Harry Potter franchise, J.K. Rowling, has recently reinvented herself as one of the most prominent anti-transgender voices in the cultural gestalt, which has torpedoed much of the dizzy goodwill that Hogwarts Legacy was supposed to offer.
As the game inches closer to release — only two weeks away — Portkey customers will be navigating a thicket of unresolvable ethical quandaries. Is it possible to divorce the themes of love and belonging — so crucial to the Harry Potter canon — from its mercurial author? Can the Wizarding World ever be reclaimed from J.K. Rowling if she stands to profit from every unit that Hogwarts Legacy sells?
Here is how Alan Tew, the game’s director, addressed those discrepancies.
“I think for us there are challenges in every game we’ve worked on. This game has been no different. When we bumped into those challenges, we went back and refocused on the stuff that we really care about. We know our fans fell in love with the Wizarding World, and we believe they fell in love with it for the right reasons,” he said. “We know that’s a diverse audience. For us, it’s making sure that the audience, who always dreamed of having this game, had the opportunity to feel welcomed back. That they have a home here and that it’s a good place to tell their story.”
I think for us there are challenges in every game we’ve worked on. This game has been no different.
Tew stopped short of mentioning J.K. Rowling by name, nor did he say anything specific about trans issues or trans rights. I asked him a second question — if he, himself, ever had any second thoughts about working on this IP after Rowling’s biases made headlines — and after a pause, Tew reiterated his earlier statement: That the team made Hogwarts Legacy for everyone.
Nevertheless, the backlash against Rowling’s ongoing opposition to transgender inclusion remains a core part of the conversation around Harry Potter. It has included Harry Potter alumni Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe, both of whom have pushed back against Rowling’s stance with statements of their own.
We recently got a chance to see Harry Potter: Hogwarts Legacy for ourselves, and you can find our extended thoughts in the final preview. Among other things, the Portkey team has attempted to balm some of that textual fraughtness with Hogwarts Legacy’s gameplay. The character creator here is broadly inclusive, and allows for a wide array of gender variance. Vocal tones, body types, and pronouns — that is, the choice to be referred to as either a witch or a wizard — are all on separate sliders.
You can find everything we know about Hogwarts Legacy right here, as well as how Harry Potter fans are coping with J.K. Rowling. Hogwarts Legacy releases February 10 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch versions to follow.
Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
