It's super easy for me to just go 'don't know, don't care, don't wanna play' and check out of Hogwarts Legacy, which is why I have largely not commented on it. It's not like I'm giving up anything by not playing it. It's enough for me that it's a Harry Potter game, I don't fucking care about that franchise. So I didn't want to just join in with a smug 'oh, I've heard of this so I'm going to score some cheap engagement on being dismissive about a thing I don't care about.'
But I am seeing a missing piece of the critique of it around me, which is biased heavily towards the 'don't even engage with it' side; because people who are engaging with it to directly critique what is specifically in the game indicate this isn't just a top-level JKR thing. This goes into the body of the text:
Troy Leavitt is the alt-right, openly antisemitic, racist and misogynistic developer. His name was taken off the headlines after his “unsavory side” came out but he was in chagne in its early stages. As for the rest of the main credited people: Moira Squier is the game writer, Alan Tew is the director, James Cabrera is the lead producer. The existence of this thing is the product of a team’s imagination, and the vile antisemitism, which has been built upon and taken to extremes over time in the franchise is a collaboration. Everyone high up in the dev team either did this on purpose or endorsed it.
To reiterate OP’s point: this is not an accident, and it’s not the work of a single bigoted individual.
And then:
Thank you for the specific names. Yes it was a purposeful team effort and Troy Leavitt went on record as saying that he made WB well aware of his youtube channel and they had no problem with it. He said he was glad they didn’t seem interested in pushing a “social justice agenda”. He voluntarily left the team due to public backlash to his youtube channel (which he still runs). He was not removed by WB or Avalanche Software. Everyone involved in the project in any kind of higher up position was well aware of his history of alt right work and knowingly endorsed it.
The usual gimmick of 'oh, sure, I hate this person in charge (say, Bezos), but there are a lot of people in between me and them who don't deserve to suffer my boycott (whatever). In this case, a lot of those people are consciously aware of and okay with this game's choices that are openly and obviously shitty in the channer I'm-not-touching-the-antisemitism way.
