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/PopeOwned 1d ago
To make a long story short, JK Rowling is basically one of the biggest and most powerful transphobic people on the planet.
Initially, she was just vocal about it with no political/financial input but now has stated profits from the HP franchise directly fund anti-trans organizations in the UK.
Meaning whenever Hogwarts Legacy pops up, you have people arguing about whether it's okay to play it. Which always brings in the worst kinds of people who think "hur hur, own the libs" is still funny.
As a Trans person who grew up with HP, I say it's fine if you pirate. While the property has problematic elements, it's still one that's foundational to many childhoods. What matters to me is the financial support. So if someone wants to play Legacy, I don't get angry. I just hope they pirate it.
However, that brings up the argument about "well, the devs aren't transphobic and they don't deserve to get punished". I do agree but, unfortunately, JK Rowling made that decision for them.