After LGBT Activists Utterly Failed to Cancel 'Harry Potter' Game, Publisher Triples Down
Despite the loud and blustery condemnation from LGBT activists, Hogwarts Legacy, a video game set in the popular fictional universe of Harry Potter, looks poised to be one of the best-selling games of 2023.
In an exclusive interview with Variety, David Haddad, president of Hogwarts Legacy publisher Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, revealed that the Harry Potter spinoff (the game takes place years before the events of the books) surpassed 22 total million units sold in 2023, and didn’t even have the full calendar year to do it.
The current-generation console versions of the game launched in February, with older consoles getting a subsequent release in May.
A heavily modified version of the game then released on the Nintendo Switch in November.
Across those three releases, the game appears to have secured the title for best-selling game of 2023. The sales data on Nintendo blockbuster The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has not been updated since the end of September on Statista, where the popular title was sitting at 19.5 million units sold (the game released in May).
Regardless of where it actually ranks in 2023, 22 million units sold is nothing to sneeze at and a mighty impressive number given the number of people trying to boycott the game for an utterly asinine reason.
Namely, author and architect of this “Wizarding World,” J.K. Rowling (decidedly not a conservative, mind you) angered swathes of far-leftists for daring to suggest men can’t just magically become a woman with drugs, surgeries and new pronouns.
Back in 2019, Rowling took to the social media platform then-known as Twitter, and added her two cents about a woman who had been fired from a think tank for refusing to acknowledge transgenderism.
Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) December 19, 2019
Many leftists took that as Rowling being “transphobic” or a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and began demanding that she bend the knee to their whims.
Credit where it’s due, Rowling may not be conservative, but she at least showed off some backbone by not just refusing to back down, but doubling down with her social media rhetoric.
Rowling is generally sympathetic to trans people, but does not think that men pretending to be women should replace women for any role intended for women.
If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 6, 2020
This largely innocuous and somewhat feminist (the left truly abhors itself, doesn’t it?) line of reasoning exploded with people calling for Rowling’s proverbial cancellation.
Those calls extended to “Hogwarts Legacy,” despite Rowling’s utter lack of involvement in the project, but despite those calls to boycott the game, the game was clearly going to be a certified blockbuster hit — and yes that statement’s in the past tense because the game’s pre-sale figures were eye-popping enough on their own.
(A side note: This might be one of the best, modern examples of the “Streisand Effect,” ever.)
Almost as one last little jab and insult at the outraged leftists who tried to ruin the game’s success, Haddad revealed to Variety that there wasn’t just one new Harry Potter game (this one focused on the magical sport of Quidditch) in the oven, but “a series of other things” related to the beloved franchise, as well.
A boycott that led to a game being the likely best-seller of the year, and then those sales spur a whole new wave of similar products?
Boycotts literally can’t get much worse than that.
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