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Warner Bros. Cancels Planned ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ Game Expansion
(www.bloomberg.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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WHY?! WHY ARE THEY BEING SO STUPID WITH HOGWARTS?!
They built this whole world into the game and did NOTHING with it! It's empty! Hogwarts the settings is perfect! The castle was fun to walk around in, to explore! I 100%'d the game because I loved exploring in it! Then they did nothing else to the game. I don't even remember what the antagonist's name was!
The game oversold all expectations! People just loved shelling out money for it! Then WB just dropped it.
I see things bitching every day about how their game studios don't make enough money and then they shit the bed here by just letting that game sit here!
If they're actually worried about money why are they not cranking out DLC every 4-6 months?! People would buy it! The world they built is begging to have more stories told, and people are holding out their wallets asking for more content for it - and they cancel it?!? They can't bitch and moan that games don't make money and then they just flip the off switch on their freaking money printer.
Thanks. That was cathartic.
WB doesn't seem to know how to release any media post 2010.
They keep trying to shoehorn IP into trends, years after market saturation to try and capture nostalgia, and then wonder why they didn't meet sales targets. See MK1, Space Jam 2, or anything related to HP or LotR.
The other thing they do is when they do have an interesting or original idea with the IP, the executive team seems too risk averse to put any capital behind it. See the two new Loony Tunes movies, one was in theaters for less than a week and the other was scrapped entirely for a tax writeoff.
Why'd you give money to a terf?
Ever looked at an advert? Bought a computer? Eaten food produced by a multinational chain like Nestlé? Almost every action you take will involve generating money for an absolute shit. It's fine (even encouraged) to let people who might not know that Rowing is a horrible bigot, but don't have a go at someone for enjoying a fucking video game.
nah, they asked a question. it's a loaded question for sure, but they asked a simple question. stop enabling.
What does this even mean?
stop enabling terfs. stop enabling punching down. stop enabling fascism. stop enabling ignorance.
I’ve seen plenty of “punching down” towards people who buy a game simply to enjoy it. It’s kind of happening in this thread.
ah yes, Gamers the MOST oppressed class of people.
bad faith argument that any sane person would be embarrassed to have uttered.
The problem arises when you believe I’m trying to make some sort of argument. I am not.
I was nicely trying to point out your hypocrisy. But since that didn’t work, let me spell it out for you:
Stop being a dick.
rights are being degraded for trans and women and fucking immigrants all around you but THEY CAME FOR THE GAMERS so you just HAD to speak up.
if you actively choose to enable intolerant actions, you no longer deserve to be tolerated by civil society. there is no paradox here.
civil society isn't protected by people like you, which is what you clearly fancy yourself doing right now.
civil society is protected from people like you.
So are you going to make a bad faith argument that Microsoft, Google, Apple, Sony, Nintendo, Steam or who is a good company to buy platforms or games from? Note, most games brought to Linux happen because much of it was funded from sales off those platforms as well. So in todays world if you want Linux games, you have to hope people keep buying them on those major platforms.
Or are you just going to take the low road of describing yourself as better than everyone else because you only play niche unprofitable games that most people will never hear of and therefor most of society who doesnt have large amounts of time to invest in games likely won't ever see.
Lol
This arguments won't go anywhere, except a flame war.
So please, both of you, kindly accept the disagreement, and move on.
How? There are no good corporations. We are all enablers. There is no conscious consumption under capitalism.
Because I'm tired of being told what to be outraged about
You're supposed to be able to figure it out yourself. People wouldn't have to tell you these things if you were smarter.
Not OP but I bought it for my sister who is notoriously impossible to buy birthday presents for because she explicitly requested something for once, then I played it through Steam family sharing to deny at least one sale of the game.
I'm suprised and a lil' confused why you would share this story in response. Respectfully, it feels like you're shifting blame. Like, okay, sure, It's your sister's birthdays fault you gave money to a terf.
I mean, you do you but if the trans persecution isn't a deal breaker when it comes to something so basic as media choices. Then, whatever. Own it.
Totally valid criticism, I absolutely agree with you. Times are tough for trans folk and giving money to transphobes is not helping that.
Looking back on it, I wouldn't buy it having seen how far off the deep end she has gone. I admit I dismissed her at the time as just a nutjob on Twitter but she's now proved to me that she is a bigot beyond reproach.
I also find myself in a better educated position than I was at that time. I have more LGBTQ friends and family than ever and I'm challenging anti-trans behaviour in others when I spot it.
Regarding your confusion and surprise, the person you replied to merely gave their reason why they bought it and supported a transphobe, and it was because this person's sister requested that game specifically.
I know the question posed was mostly rhetorical in nature. But I'm not sure why you are questioning why someone is answering the question, and I'm not sure what kind of satisfactory answer you could get from anyone who had purchased the game (and supported a transphobe, yes, which I haven't).
The rest of your comment is a legit response, but I'm only pushing back on the first sentence of your reply. Or even moving that sentence to the back of your comment to make it less charged. If someone's going to answer a loaded question, let them, but get to the point about how misguided they are with their justification before you question the answer. That would likely make for a more constructive discussion. Unless you think that these answers are unhelpful in the first place, that we're better off not hearing why people have done transphobic things with different intentions, and we should refuse to give them space to reflect, learn, then own up to their transgressions if they don't come right out of the gate to apologize. Then sure, ignore what I said.
They also closed Monolith, a great studio behind e.g. FEAR amd Shadow of Mordor games. They are making all the wrong decisions, and then will wonder why they have lost to competitors.
I loved shadow of mordor/war, and always wondered why they didn't make another. However I also guess better to go out early before it's done to death
They didn't make another because they were forced to make a game that was Wonder Woman and live service. How does that work? Clearly they didn't know either since they spun their wheels for like seven years, lost all their old staff, and then got shut down.
It's genuinely baffling watching WB just make like, every wrong decision. Their business is losing money and every time a project that receives praise or interest is announced/released that is nearly guaranteed to make them lots of money.They just don't go through with it. Or they do some work on it then can it.
It's like, even out of touch executives at other large companies have enough feelers to find out generally what people are enjoying. Then with all their money they throw something in that general direction and something eventually sticks.
With WB though it's like, nothing is working. The things that do stick don't make as much as they thought. And the things that they don't think will make money do make money, often more than they thought... And then they just always find a way to either piss off everyone, sour and sabotage the future projects, or just don't do anything with it.
It's just so fucking weird. Like I don't even enjoy or partake in most of the stuff WB puts out. But sitting on the sidelines and just watching it all unfold makes me question what drugs the leaders at the company are on...
I'm glad I'm not the only one genuinely confused by this. Are they shorting their own company? What is going on?
I mean, a Gollum game?
Is someone upset they can't fork over more money to the rabidly transphobic piece of shit and the media conglomerate megacorp?
Seeing how the game prominently features trans characters and that Rowling wasn't involved in making it, it probably doesn't bother many people.
I want to support media that show and empathize with trans people, and Hogwarts is one of them. But yes, even though she was not involved, she surely is receiving some royalties due to the setting.
hogwarts is not the place to do that then. there are plenty of other queer games out there to support queer game dev. instead of pretending that giving money to rowling is doing anything to support trans people.
It would be ridiculous to pretend so. Giving money to trans-supportive games absolutely does though.
you are giving money to rowling with the purchase of any offically licensed harry potter product. that allows her to continue pushing her bullshit.
there are actual trans-supportive games out there to support and stop trying to make excuses for your inability to get past your nostalgia.
Rowling having slightly more money makes no difference to her spewing her views, she is set for life anyway. Yes I'd like to avoid giving her money, but a much stronger signal I'd like to send is that a game with trans characters sells well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_capitalism
it means nothing besides them trying to profit from the nostalgia ridden queers. again, yall could support actual queer works instead of work with a thin veneer of it.
Rowling has enough money to donate to shitty politics for the rest of her life ten times over.
Attempts to "not support her" are about 3 decades too late and entirely irrelevant at this point beyond making people feel good about themselves. She doesn't need your support nor even registers it.
We're talking about the world's first and only writer to become a billionaire with her books here.
Right message. Wrong tone. Assuming you want people to fork less money to the transphobic piece of shit.
You do want that, right?
Oh shit, the tone police are here. I'm not under the impression the person I'm responding to is going to change their behavior after this has already been widely talked about to death for years, and so I really don't care what tone I use. This person is helping make the lives of real, actual, perfectly innocent trans people (and especially the lives of trans women) hell because they a) don't care about those people or somehow more pathetically b) do care but can't restrain themselves from buying themselves a children's toy to that end.
I get it. Venting online is way cheaper than therapy and twice as effective.
coddling the oblivious to enable the bigots has not been a winning strategy on any front if you simply look around.
I imagine, and I'm no English expert, that there's a line somewhere between coddling and mindless rant.
For real.
They could've been making GTA levels of money. Soooo many people were able to overlook the terribleness of the author just to be able to be in the Harry Potter world.
They're still moving forward with the sequel (at least according to the article), so if I had to guess they figured they missed the boat with the expansion and want to focus on the sequel instead.
Which is fine, but I have no idea why they're just throwing everything they have in the trash. They built the whole world and just sat on it. Expansions could make them so much money to fund the next game in the short term
(please do not support TERF content, pirate it if you really want to nostalgia bait yourself)
because dlc is not something you just "do". it's something of a scale and complexity that needs to be planned out from the go. If the dev team is allowed to cook you might get an Assassin's creed 2 situation. but this company will almost certainly not allow that to happen.
(please do not support TERF content, pirate it if you really want to nostalgia bait yourself)
My wife has been really enjoying the game
Probably more expensive than they realize and too much work
Then they really are horrible at gaming because there are millions of people chomping at the bit to pay any amount for dlc to that game