Hogwarts versus transgender rights, Blizzard versus Beijing

The “Harry Potter” series once cast a spell over an entire generation of young readers and moviegoers, but now that the global franchise’s most anticipated video game is less than a week away from release, a good deal of that magic seems to have vanished into thin air.

Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world role-playing game set in the wizarding world created by British author J.K. Rowling, launches on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox on Feb. 10. Far from the largely low-effort movie tie-in games released in the early 2000s, Hogwarts Legacy once looked like a legitimate AAA experience — until it became a flashpoint in the ever-evolving transgender rights movement.

This latest front of the culture wars was precipitated by none other than Rowling herself. Since 2020, the writer has made a habit of claiming that growing acceptance of transgender people in some way erodes what it means to live as a biological woman. Rowling has offered caveats here and there, but the aggregate of her tweets — as well as her outspoken opposition to legislation in Scotland that eased the process for people seeking to legally change their gender — telegraphs Rowling’s position.

In the intervening years, “Harry Potter” actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint have all pushed back against Rowling’s anti-trans opinions. Now with Hogwarts Legacy about to hit shelves, so, too, are large swaths of the gaming public, including a 600,000-strong Reddit community (on which posts ridiculing any purchase of Hogwarts Legacy appear daily) and gaming discussion forum Resetera (which banned any discussion or promotion of the game) and a number of popular streamers. Most notable among the latter is perhaps Hasan Abi, who boasts more than 2.3 million followers on the livestreaming service Twitch and is considering playing Hogwarts Legacy only if he and others donate all proceeds during streams to trans charities and support organizations.

While there is a set of circumstances here that could leave Rowling the sympathetic figure beset by an internet mob intent on its next cancellation of the week, the billionaire author has courted the controversy, even tweeting her dismissal directly at relative unknowns should they dare to voice their support of a Hogwarts Legacy boycott.

Rowling is entitled to her opinions, but seeing her punching down, especially against an already marginalized group, is certainly not the kind of behavior readers idolized in her characters who often defended the vulnerable.

In the end, this might all be for naught. The catalog for Avalanche Studios, the developer behind Hogwarts Legacy, is primarily composed of tie-in games for movies and TV shows. In 2016, the company temporarily folded until the following year, when Warner Bros. — the rights holder to the “Harry Potter” franchise — turned the lights back on.

Avalanche’s triumphant return to the game development world? Cars 3: Driven to Win. Metacritic score? An aggressively lukewarm 72 on the PlayStation 4, and an abysmal 59 on Xbox One and Switch.

Nevertheless, the quality of Hogwarts Legacy shouldn’t matter to those advocating a boycott, but anything less than a true AAA experience will make it much easier for gamers to avoid the moral quandary involved in purchasing it — let alone the moral calculus Warner Bros. will surely perform if and when it’s time to consider funding a potential sequel.

Sino shutdown

Meanwhile, in a world away from Hogwarts, Jan. 23 saw World of Warcraft, deckbuilder Hearthstone and the rest of Blizzard’s catalog officially go dark for gamers in China. This was the result of the American-based company’s inability to sign an extension of their publishing agreement with NetEase, a Hangzhou-based company with which Blizzard had partnered for the past 14 years.

Knee-jerk reactions from netizens predictably lambasted NetEase as well as the Chinese government for its protectionist policy of requiring foreign-based developers to sign licensing agreements with homegrown publishers — essentially dangling the country’s massive player base as bait in exchange for the ability to cut off access if, say, any politically sensitive content were to pop up in their games. While Beijing hardly deserves sympathy here, Blizzard has done little to warrant anyone’s pity.

After all, Blizzard, now a Microsoft subsidiary, is the same company that cut ties with a Hong Kong-based Hearthstone player when he dared voice support for 2019’s pro-democracy protests. It’s also the same company that has been sued multiple times by former employees for sexual harassment owing to an alleged “frat boy” culture at its offices. In 2017, a female employee committed suicide at a company retreat; subsequently filed and currently ongoing legal action pointed to that same hostile work environment as a significant motivation in the employee’s death.

This isn’t just whataboutism — Blizzard has at the very least proven it doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Push past the “China bad!” headlines on this server shutdown story and another possibility emerges: Could the company instead be using China’s millions-strong player base as a bargaining chip?

Part of NetEase’s claimed grievance is that after negotiations on a new licensing agreement came to a halt last November, Blizzard’s offer of a six-month extension gave it the right to continue seeking offers for a longer-term arrangement from NetEase’s in-country competitors. A month later, Blizzard issued a warning to gamers in China instructing them to back up their save data in case, as eventually happened, they had to pull the plug on the country’s servers.

Beijing has more than made clear its preference to crack down on addictive gaming, but when millions suddenly find one of their most beloved pastimes taken away, those same millions could very soon start clamoring for a return to normalcy. It’s unlikely they’d direct their ire at the state and risk political persecution, and what grievance can they lodge against Blizzard, a company that even in normal times operates outside the country? Instead, NetEase and other similar publishers become the easy target for gamers who just want to log on again.

Who stands to gain? Blizzard — especially if this precipitates a race-to-the bottom bidding war among Chinese licensing companies eager to become the new keeper of the keys.

Despite the undeniable place in gaming history Blizzard will always occupy thanks to landmark releases in years past, it’s now a multibillion-dollar media empire that needs to please its shareholders above all else. If there’s a yuan to be made in the future by cutting off millions of Chinese gamers in the present, you can be sure Blizzard’s executives aren’t losing any sleep over the decision.