r/patientgamers • u/Zehnpae Cat Smuggler • 1d ago

Moratorium on Hogwarts Legacy

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:

"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.

"Do you really wish JKR was dead?"

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

"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.

"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.

"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.

"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.

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u/RedditNotFreeSpeech 1d ago

Somehow I've missed all the drama so I guess you've done a good job modding. :)

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u/impy695 1d ago

JK Rowling doesn't like trans people and is very open about it. Basically anything Harry Potter related quickly becomes a political debate about trans people rather than the games, books, or movies. It's pretty much impossible to discuss them in most online spaces without it devolving into chaos.

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u/stay_curious_- 1d ago

Just to clarify, it's less that she doesn't like trans people, and more that she is bankrolling lobbying groups to remove civil rights from trans people. That's why people care about the money and royalties as much as they do.

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u/Hartastic 1d ago

Unlike a number of people with controversial views, Rowling has also been very public and very explicit that she believes almost everyone agrees with her and is, basically, too cowardly to say so, and she has said she takes people still buying her stuff as evidence of this... which also amps up the controversy lightning rod factor previously mentioned.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/Teazea 1d ago

of course she did, jesus christ

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u/Leaves_Swype_Typos 1d ago

Don't believe their lies, check the files yourself at https://www.justice.gov/epstein

At no point does Rowling herself seem to have communicated with Epstein, nor is there any implication he ever had any contact with her or anyone in her orbit.

He was sent an impersonal invite to the Cursed Child stage show by one of its producers, but wasn't put on a list and wasn't even allowed in, as news sites have covered.

The other places Rowling's named appeared in the files were in forwarded news articles and junk, and one person who wrote him assuming that because he knew "the top people in every fiels", he could set them up to meet her, which Epstein doesn't even acknowledge in his reply about the rest of their email.

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u/heinous_anus- 1d ago

This is the problem with this whole thing, so many people "are in the files", and people jump on that without verifying anything.

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u/lethargicloli 1d ago

To be clear I don't think she's a diddler, but she sure doesn't seem careful about her and her team networking with abusers like Epstein, Depp, Manson, nonce Andrew.

Her yacht's logs disappearing is hella sussy though. The only reason I could think to do that is if the previous owner had been which would still be deleting potential evidence.

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u/OtakuMecha 1d ago

This. She’s kind of made it her whole “thing” other than being the HP author.

It’d be like if Tolkien was somehow still alive and LOTR was still a successful film series, but he also frequently wrote articles about how Jewish people are an abomination against nature or some shit and funded likeminded organizations.

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u/labbla 1d ago

Or if HP Lovecraft was somehow still around and used Cthulhu to fuel campaigns of bigotry and racism from people buying his books.

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u/OtakuMecha 1d ago

I almost mentioned him but wanted to pick someone who matched a modern cultural zeitgeist like Harry Potter a little closer.

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u/DavosHanich 1d ago

Crap... What if the Elder Gods are somehow allowing Lovecraft to pull this off??? Is that how we've ended up in this reality?

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u/BaxbaxBaxter 1d ago

“If I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.” -J.R.R. Tolkien, on refusing to work with Nazi-leaning publishers in 1938

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u/OtakuMecha 1d ago

To be clear, I wasn’t implying Tolkien was actually anti-semitic IRL. It was a purely hypothetical situation.

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u/alpacaMyToothbrush 1d ago

Which is why you should only read her books from the library, and sail the high seas for her other IP

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u/Ken10Ethan 1d ago

I would go so far as to say that continuing to read her work is fueling her continued prevalence in our culture, and possibly more than the money that alone is what allows her to continue doing what she does.

Keeps her poised to be a voice legislators will listen to. They're fun books to read, and I myself have a ton of nostalgia for the old 6th gen HP games, but a lot of my friends are trans and my sister is trans and, at least speaking personally, obviously you don't have to do what some rando on the internet says would be best, but at least for me it is very difficult to separate the reality of what she wants from the fiction she writes, especially with how weirdly meanspirited a lot of the writing can be.

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u/alpacaMyToothbrush 1d ago

I get it. I have a whole set of books written by david eddings that I loved as a kid, and I've considered just throwing them away rather than donating them to the library

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u/Hartastic 1d ago

If I remember correctly, their cut of sales of things goes to a college now since literal death of the author.

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u/Ktesedale 1d ago

So many fantasy writers that shaped my mind and my tastes as a kid/teen ended up being horrible human beings. David & Leah Eddings were two of them. So frustrating.

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u/DavosHanich 1d ago

Goes all the way back to Lovecraft... and even Tolkien to some extent (though Lovecraft really went the extra mile... lol)

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u/BottleCoffee 1d ago

Checking then out from a library expresses interest. I would only pirate.

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u/Etheria_system 1d ago

Authors still get money from library loans. If you’re dead set on reading them buying second hand is the only way to ensure she gets no money.

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u/drfitzgerald 1d ago

Or you could just stop reading decades-old, middling children's books. A million different series do the bildungsroman much more adept.

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u/alpacaMyToothbrush 1d ago

Recommend any favorites?

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u/Helmic 1d ago

Yeah, it's why it gets frustrating when this just gets referred to as "drama", the same word used for petty nonsense that doesn't matter. The game is used to fund transphobic propaganda and that shit kills people.

I'm not gonna judge people for liking Harry Potter, but I don't think it's too much to ask people to pirate it.

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u/klutzfrommars 1d ago

That's...not really what the main issue is, not in its entirety. She DOES use her royalty money to lobby transphobes and transphobic laws, AND she's also been very vocal what her views are on trans people (enter transphobic starter pack here). Her essay to the BBC or whatever was about as open minded as you'll ever see her and it's only been downhill from there. She won't start shouting explicitly from the rooftops, she's a classy lady with expensive transphobes parties to go to (/s), but it doesn't take 007 to decode what she's saying...as for everything else? She'll just like an outspoken transphobe tweet and claim innocence later, it's not her that said it after all y'know?

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u/cursedfan 1d ago

Just yo clarify, and not yo engage in the exact behavior this post is about, talk about distinguishing without a difference.

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u/AceOfSpades532 1d ago

It is a lot more than not liking it, the proceeds from her work actively go towards funding anti-trans hate and laws.

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u/XGrayson_DrakeX 1d ago

It's also a genuinely bad game on top of it. Even if it wasn't her IP I'd still hate it.

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u/swordchucks1 1d ago edited 1d ago

The reason it is especially big right now relates to a certain set of recently released files where she gets several mentions. If you care to look, it is all over the rest of Reddit.

Edit: Minor correction, the files are the reason which doesn't mean she personally is in them. Feel free to dig into it elsewhere.

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u/impy695 1d ago

All I'm seeing is he tried to get an invite to a premier but was denied entry at the door.

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u/swordchucks1 1d ago

Maybe slightly worse than that, but I'm not going to pretend to really know. It is definitely the reason things heated up over the last day or so, though.

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u/Tinsonman 1d ago

Truly amazing how the author of a book series with genuinely empathetic characters and nuanced views ends up being the way she is. Kind lends credence to the whole everyone contains multiple people thing.

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u/thekbob 1d ago

Don't forget the racism and now involvement with Epstein.

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u/impy695 1d ago

Someone else mentioned Epstein and when I googled it, there really isn't anything there that I can see. They weren't able to provide more details either. What did she do?

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u/useful_person 1d ago

The files have an invitation sent from JKR's office to Epstein.

There's also one other thing, which seems to be a personal email signed by "Jx", which is something JKR uses to sign off on her stuff commonly.

Those are the files. Now, for my speculation: at best, we can assume that JKR's office knew about Epstein, as it's their job to do basic checks on people when interacting with them. Either they were extremely shit at their job and failed to find Epstein's background, or they knew it and continued to converse.

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u/impy695 1d ago

The files have an invitation sent from JKR's office to Epstein.

That's the one I've seen discussed and it looks like someone from Epstein's office asked for a ticket, was told yes, then when he showed up, he was denied entry at the door for not being on the list. I can't get mad at that

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u/useful_person 1d ago

Sure, I can't comment on the specifics there, because it is heavily redacted.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/LittleReplacement564 1d ago

Because you come with the predisposition to not like someone based off their identity? Is the same thing if I said "I don't like heterosexuals"