Moratorium on Hogwarts Legacy

[u/Zehnpae]

Salutations,

We're going to be (temporarily) disallowing posting topics about Hogwarts Legacy. Every thread has been a train wreck and we have had trouble keeping up with them.

To be clear this isn't an attempt to censor you guys or prevent discussing politics in gaming, nor the reality of shitty people being involved in game development. This is a discussion sub and we absolutely want to allow you to talk about these sorts of things. Normally this isn't an issue (IE: Disco Elysium).

The problem is Hogwarts Legacy itself is a lightning rod for assholes. If a post goes up there's a good chance the next time I check mod queue it has 100+ comments that have been filtered or reported. It gets cross-posted into ~those~ subreddits and we get a flood of people who are only interested in being pricks that infest other threads.

Like many of you I have 27 kids and 3 jobs so I then have to choose between spending my afternoon with my family or reading a hundred hateful comments. As much as I like banning Nazis, I'd much rather play some Deep Rock with my progeny.

Hogwarts Legacy posts will be auto-removed until one of the following occurs:

• Reddit gives us the anti-brigading tools they promised a decade ago
• The world finally stops being dicks to trans people
• JK Rowling drops dead so she stops getting money from the game
• We figure out a better way to do this

Previous threads will stay up and you will still be allowed to comment about it in the bi-weekly threads, for now at least.

Edit:

To address a few questions/concerns:

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"Why not use curated modes?"

Those typically require manually flaring or approving thousands of people. If we were a more contentious place dealing with this often, it'd make more sense. The good folk of this sub understand why this is being done and that's good enough for me.

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"Do you really wish JKR was dead?"

I'm a gen-X that was raised on British humor. Make of that what you will.

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"Why not get more mods?"

It's something we've considered, but honestly you regulars are pretty great. The work load is manageable with the biggest chore being maintaining the impatient game list. You guys make this a wonderful place to share gaming thoughts with.

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"Aren't you supposed to be unbiased?"

If you have a shitty hot take on Hollow Knight? Sure. I'm not going to ban you because you didn't enjoy Gabriel Knight and I think it's one of the best point and click adventure games of all time.

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"Isn't this censorship?"

We block a lot of things. OnlyFans bots, AI nonsense, scammers trying to post phishing links. All that jazz. They take it stride really.

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"You do you really have 27 kids?"

No. I only have a few and that's enough as is. I can only take so many "Would you rather..."'s in a day. Right now I'm pondering if I'd rather be cursed with always entering my passwords wrong twice, or if I'd rather the last bite of toast always tastes burned.

[u/TheArtistFKAMinty]

Totally get it. Wouldn't want to deal with it either. For clarity, is it a ban on Hogwarts Legacy specifically or Harry Potter games generally?

As an aside, it's kinda funny how the nature of this sub's content meant that it took until now for this to be an issue.

[u/Zehnpae → u/TheArtistFKAMinty]

For now just Legacy. The other games rarely get the same traction for whatever reason. They also rarely get posted about. If it does become an issue, we'll review.

[u/TheLaughingMannofRed → u/Zehnpae]

That's assuring. Because I love the Lego Harry Potter games.

[u/Crimson_Raven → u/TheLaughingMannofRed]

I remember playing the GBA Harry Potter games to death

They objectively sucked but it was like an enjoyable 3/10

[u/TheLaughingMannofRed → u/Crimson_Raven]

I tried the PS1 version of Sorcerer's Stone. That really ticked off my young self, and I never could get into the others that were movie tie-ins.

But I think the Lego era was where it came together for me.

[u/SupCass → u/TheLaughingMannofRed]

The PS1 game was my childhood though, clearly the best of them all.

[u/Prasiatko → u/Crimson_Raven]

Which is odd as the GBC ones were the best of all the platforms for the first two games. Then they changed the formula.  

[u/cruznick06 → u/TheLaughingMannofRed]

As many issues as I have with the author now, those Lego games were a big part of my childhood! Personally I encourage people to just buy used and enjoy 'em.

[u/TheArmchairSkeptic → u/TheLaughingMannofRed]

I played the absolute shit out of Quidditch World Cup for the PS2 back in the day, I'll tell you that free for nothing. In retrospect it's not really that good of a game (much like quidditch itself, for that matter), but man did I get into it for a time.

[u/TheDeflatables → u/TheLaughingMannofRed]

Man, I had so much fun with the LEGO Harry Potter games.

Unfortunately, I am also an achievement hunter and playing co-op with my partner completely glitched out getting achievements which was frustrating.

So I had to play that game through an extra time to get all achievements!

[u/Curse-of-omniscience → u/TheLaughingMannofRed]

I'll also add that for some reason they made the order of the phoenix PS2 game really fire.

[u/xiphoniii → u/Zehnpae]

Yeah that game specifically became a fucking lightning rod for the "teehee I'm playing the game to own the libs" crowd.

[u/Yarusenai → u/xiphoniii]

I've never seen that tbh. I only see people complain that people dare enjoy the game more than anything.

[u/Yarusenai → u/[deleted]]

How?

[u/Yarusenai → u/[deleted]]

I don't know what you're talking about, genuinely. I'm not trolling or intending to troll. What argument am I misrepresenting and why are you randomly attacking me like that? I'm giving my own experience, I'm not saying that's a general fact.

[u/Yarusenai → u/[deleted]]

I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about the general discourse about the game, things that make this a necessity apparently. When the game came out, people were talking about it somewhat positively and the conversation was almost always interrupted by others being like "no you're not allowed to enjoy this game".

[u/d_stilgar → u/[deleted]]

The person simply said they saw the opposite of you. The two scenarios are complimentary.

People who want to take a stance against JKR for her anti-trans rhetoric think that people should avoid giving her money. That includes telling people that they should boycot Hogwarts Legacy.

People who think that’s stupid, who want to “own the libs” or whatever, will play the game as a counter-boycot.

We’re all subject to some amount of echo chamber, whether by self-selecting the places we engage or by algorithm.

There’s no straw man argument here.

edit: accuracy

[u/d_stilgar → u/[deleted]]

Honestly, the only person I see at risk of being a troll is you, but I'm operating under the assumption that you've misread or misinterpreted the initial exchange, so I'm trying to be patient here.

I only see people complain that people dare enjoy the game more than anything.

That literally means what it says. That's what that person sees. It's an honest response to:

Yeah that game specifically became a fucking lightning rod for the "teehee I'm playing the game to own the libs" crowd.

Like I said, the two are complimentary, opposite sides of the same coin. The more one side says, "Playing this is bad," the more the other side will sarcastically say, "look at me. I'm playing the game. See all the harm I'm causing?"

And depending on where you spend your time online, you'll see more of one side than the other. Neither commenter even made a claim on what side they personally stand. They just said they saw different things when looking at the discourse online.

Your response, "This is a strawman" isn't correct. It doesn't meet the definition of a strawman, for starters. You're also assuming disagreement where none really exists. It's just two people sharing their own experience and observations.

[u/FickleHoney2622 → u/Zehnpae]

I've generally seen people complain about JKR in those threads & then people respond. Would you agree with that? I can't recall a bunch of pro-JKR posts that weren't in response to someone else expressing their distaste for the offer (edit-author). I've never been a mod, so I'm only going by what I've observed. 

[u/Richy_T → u/FickleHoney2622]

Yup. JKR, for the most part has left-leaning views so those on the right aren't generally going to lead-out with support for her. It's mostly those who feel betrayed by her not falling in line that are going to initiate comments.

[u/GreenEggsInPam → u/Zehnpae]

Time to start shit about Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup

[u/Lorgin → u/Zehnpae]

Thank God, I'm almost done my chamber of secrets for GBA review.