Hogwarts Legacy, an action role-playing game based on the Harry Potter universe, had one of the largest single-day releases for a PC game Friday, according to SteamDB, despite controversy and boycotts by players over whether to support J.K. Rowling’s franchise because of comments her critics have decried as transphobic.
SteamDB, which tracks concurrent players on the PC platform Steam, recorded 783,277 players on Hogwarts legacy as of 1 p.m. Saturday, marking the second-largest player count ever recorded in a 24-hour span.
The game trails only PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, which ranks first all-time with a 24-hour peak of 1,320,219.
Hogwarts Legacy’s total marks the eighth-largest peak on Steam of all-time and is the third-ranked single-player game, trailing Elden Ring (953,426) and Cyberpunk 2077 (1,295,114)
1.28 million. That’s how many people watched Hogwarts Legacy content on the streaming platform Twitch on February 9, according to the game’s developers, making it the highest-watched single-player game ever on the platform.
It is unknown how many people played the game on other platforms, including on Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, though it topped both console’s sales charts before the game launched Friday. Experts told CNN they expect the game to sell at least 10 million copies during its launch weekend.
Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world video game by Warner Bros. Discovery, faced controversy because of its connection with J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter novels the game is based on. Rowling has tweeted her views on biological sex and the transgender rights in recent years, which many have criticized as transphobic. The Human Rights Campaign, in addition to actors from the Harry Potter films, have voiced support for transgender people in response. The game—which some popular game review sites like Kotaku, Polygon and Eurogamer did not initially review in protest—does feature the first transgender woman character in the Harry Potter universe, though she (Sirona Ryan) has attracted criticism because her name allegedly sounds masculine. Despite this, some have noted the name Sirona refers to the Celtic goddess of healing and rebirth.
‘Hogwarts Legacy’ Video Game Controversy: Boycotts And J.K. Rowling’s Comments On Transgender Community, Explained (Forbes)
