The value of boycotting Harry Potter: Hogwarts Legacy

On Friday, Warner Bros. Games will release Hogwarts Legacy, a role-playing game set in the Harry Potter universe, aka the Wizarding World. The game is racking up preorders and getting solid reviews. It seems poised to be a hit.

Online, Hogwarts Legacy is also a point of controversy, because pretty much everything associated with the Harry Potter franchise has been radioactive ever since author J.K. Rowling came out as a proud transphobe. It’s a long story, but to summarize, it started when Rowling started to say some dicey things on Twitter a few years back, and reached its zenith in 2020 when she published a lengthy essay where she misgendered trans people, implied that they’re dangerous or confused, and generally peddled in fear-mongering stereotypes disproven with a glance at the research or just by talking to trans people about their experiences.

I don’t want to get too sidetracked with a discussion of whether Rowling is actually transphobic, but I know that a lot of people aren’t convinced, so let’s use an example from her essay. Among many other points, she argues that if trans women are allowed into female public restrooms, it would “open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside,” implying that will put cis women in danger. Ignoring the fact that anybody can walk into any public bathroom as they please right this very second, the science has long since put this argument to bed; studies show that trans-inclusive policies make no difference when it comes to bathroom safety, and other studies show that trans people are at a greater risk of violence than cis people. In short, allowing trans people into bathrooms that match their gender won’t do any harm, but barring them might.

Rowling is parroting a baseless bigoted talking point here, even if she couches it in polite terms. Her essay is that kind of thing over and over again, but for nearly 4,000 words. What makes Rowling especially pernicious is that, unlike a lot of transphobes, she’s rich, famous and influential enough to sway public opinion, which is dangerous when her goal is to stop trans people from getting more rights or to roll back the ones they have. For instance, she recently came out against a bill that would have made it less difficult for Scottish citizens to legally change their gender; as of this writing, the bill has passed the Scottish parliament but was blocked by the government of the United Kingdom by royal assent, effectively neutering the will of the elected legislature.

Understandably, some people don’t want to give money to someone who intends to use their considerable power and influence to make life harder for trans people. And that brings us to the boycott of Hogwarts Legacy. In the abstract, I get it: if the game doesn’t do well, it won’t get a sequel, J.K. Rowling’s influence will further diminish, she won’t get as much money as she otherwise would have, and there will be one less powerful voice arguing against the equality of trans people.

Hogwarts Legacy is a hit, so what’s the point of a boycott?

The issue is that the boycott didn’t work. Like I said, pre-orders have been robust; all signs point to Hogwarts Legacy being a financial success. Is this partially due to reactionary fans buying extra copies of the game so they can “own the libs” or whatever? Probably, and that’s quite silly. But honestly, I suspect that the biggest reason is that most people either don’t care very much about the controversy or haven’t even heard of it.

A lot of back-and-forth about the game takes place on Twitter, which we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking accurately represents what people are talking about offline. But it’s helpful to remember that barely a fifth of adults in the U.S. say they use Twitter at all, and that only a small fraction of those users produce the great majority of tweets. Comfortingly, most people live outside this bubble and probably pre-ordered the game because they like Harry Potter and wanted to play it.

So if the boycott didn’t keep J.K. Rowling from amassing more wealth and power — at this point, there’s very little she could do to lose her immense influence — is there any value to boycotting Hogwarts Legacy? I think so.

Moving the corporate needle, millimeter by millimeter

You see, although the boycott didn’t accomplish what a boycott is usually meant to, the backlash against J.K. Rowling’s transphobia did have an effect. She may be as rich as ever, but her reputation has taken a hit. For instance, she wasn’t featured in a Harry Potter movie reunion special on HBO Max (Rowling said she chose not to partake because it was about the movies and not the books, but I have an extremely hard time believing the backlash to her bigotry had nothing to do with it), and Warner Bros. Games made sure to say that Rowling “is not directly involved in the creation of the game,” although it’s obviously based on her work.

Moreover, the developer of Hogwarts Legacy, Avalanche Software, included a trans character in the game: Sirona Ryan*, the owner of the Three Broomsticks pub. “The team felt that it was very important to create a game that is representative of the rich and diverse world of Harry Potter as well as the groups of people who play games, which includes the LGBTQIA+ community,” they said in a statement. “We have a diverse cast of characters that players will encounter throughout the game.” Again, it’s hard to prove whether there’s a direct link between the Rowling backlash and the inclusion of Sirona Ryan, but I have a very hard time believing it wasn’t a major factor.

Mind you, I don’t think that the developers included Sirona out of the goodness of their hearts. Her inclusion feels like Warner Bros. Games trying to deflect some bad PR. It’s not the most noble reason for including trans representation, but that may be beside the point. Remember: most of the people playing this game aren’t doing it because they have a stake in an online brawl. They’re people who enjoy Harry Potter and want to visit Hogwarts. They’re parents who bought the game for their kids, or they’re someone who just thought it looked neat. These people are going to interact in a positive way with a trans character at Hogwarts and walk away feeling like the Wizarding World is a little more inclusive, and maybe that trans people living their lives isn’t anything to get upset about.

And I think that is, on balance, a good thing. It’s something that J.K. Rowling definitely wouldn’t have approved of were she involved with the game, and it’s something I suspect wouldn’t be included at all had people not made it clear online that her transphobia was not something they were willing to tolerate.

I’m not so naive as to think a relatively small group of activists online can succeed in, for example, making is so Warner Bros. no longer creates movies, games and TV shows set in the Wizarding World. If the Harry Potter IP makes money (and it does), we will get more content, period full stop.  (Although Warner Bros. may doom the franchise without any outside help if it keeps making uninspired movies like the Fantastic Beasts trilogy.) But those activists, if they’re loud  and persistent enough, can get a say in what kinds of Harry Potter content we get going forward, and maybe even who (and who doesn’t) get to be involved.

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*I should mention that some fans are arguing that the name “Sirona Ryan” is itself a swipe at trans people, as you could shorten it to “Sir Ryan,” which sounds masculine. This strikes me as, to put it mildly, a reach. It’s the kind of thing that’s not going to occur to anyone unless they’re familiar with J.K. Rowling’s history of transphobia and looking for potential pain points. And again, the people for whom Sirona’s inclusion could make a positive impacts are the ones who don’t know anything about this fight, aka the lucky ones.