If you are a Harry Potter fan you have probably heard all about (and are most likely already playing) the new role-playing video game set in the wizarding world.
The highly anticipated game, Hogwarts Legacy, was released on February 10 and has already exploded in popularity — but there’s also some opposition to it because of JK Rowling’s comments about transgender people.
The game is set about 100 years before the events of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, with users playing as a character entering Hogwarts a fifth year student.
Players get to customise their character, learn to cast spells, brew options, duel opponents and complete quests to further the storyline.
As soon as Hogwarts Legacy was released social media was flooded with reviews from players as they experienced the game for the first time, along with hundreds of videos containing helpful tips and tricks.
The game has been such a success that within the first week the top video game streamers on live streaming website Twitch earned over $100,000 from playing Hogwarts Legacy.
Analysis from bonusetu found the top 100 videos relating to the game amassed more than 29 million views in the first week.
On Twitch creators are given $3.50 for every 1000 views, equating to $102,056 in earnings just seven days after the game became available for general release.
Based on data from TwitchTracker over the last week, Hogwarts Legacy has become the second-most watched game on Twitch, accounting for 6.8 per cent of the platform’s total viewers.
Fans have watched over 34 million hours of gameplay footage in the last seven days, while to-date viewership peaked at 1.3 million on February 7 – when early access was granted.
Speaking on the data, bonusetu said: “The hype around Hogwarts Legacy doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon, and it’s encouraging to see so many content creators earning thousands from uploading their gameplay content on Twitch this week.
“As the game becomes even more widely available later this year with the Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox One releases, it’ll be interesting to find out what it’s total earning potential comes to across 2023 – it could well become one of Twitch’s most valuable games.”
The game’s success comes despite calls ahead of its release date to boycott the game due to controversial comments made by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling about transgender people.
In December last year, writer and filmmaker Jessie Earl claimed supporting Hogwarts Legacy is “harmful” to the transgender community.
There was so much concern about Rowling’s involvement in the new game, that Warner Bros even addressed it in the FAQ section of the Hogwarts Legacy website, stating the author was “not involved in the creation of the game”.
“But as creator of the wizarding world and one of the world’s greatest storytellers, her extraordinary body of writing is the foundation of all projects in the Wizarding World,” the statement read.
“This is not a new story from J.K. Rowling, however we have collaborated closely with her team on all aspects of the game to ensure it remains in line with the magical experiences fans expect.”
Though she may not have been directly involved in the game’s creation, Forbes confirmed she would earn royalties from the game.
The famous author became the centre of a PR storm when, in June 2020, she mocked an article using the phrase “People who menstruate”.
The billionaire author responded to the story on Twitter, “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”
In response to the backlash she wrote a 3600 word essay explaining why she was so “worried about the new trans activism” and the effort “to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”.
The author, who has denied being transphobic, described transgender woman having access to female bathrooms as “[throwing] open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman”.
Rowling’s 2020 novel Troubled Blood, which she published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, featured a cisgender male serial killer who dresses up as a woman to lure victims.
LGBTQI+ charity Mermaids branded this a “longstanding and somewhat tired trope, responsible for the demonisation of a small group of people”.
In the past she has also liked a tweet that referred to trans women as “men in dresses”.
Harry Potter cast members Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson have all spoken out in support of the trans community in the wake of Rowling’s comments.