Hogwarts Legacy 2 is staring down the barrel of a live service future following a concerning new announcement from publisher Warner Bros.
If you've been paying attention to the world of gaming, you'll know that WB's most recent superhero offering, Suicide Squad Kills The Justice League, has fallen flat on its face, farted in its trousers, and pooped itself. In other words, it has not performed well.
In our review we argued there's a genuinely good superhero game buried under the live service guff. But rather than admit live service guff is the problem, WB has instead elected to double down on live service in future titles. This, in spite of the fact Hogwarts Legacy was one of the most successful games of 2023.
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As reported by GameSpot, Warner Bros. Discovery gaming boss J.B. Perrette said that single-player games are volatile, and success on the level of Hogwarts Legacy is rarely guaranteed. Apparently it's safer to have a studio that made one of the best Batman games of all time spend the better part of a decade on a DOA loot-shooter.
"We're doubling down on games as an area where we think there is a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities we have on the studio where we're uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games," Perrette explained.
So what does this mean for Hogwarts Legacy 2, which is already all but confirmed to be in development? The major concern is that WB is almost certainly going to find ways to stick live service elements in there, even if it ends up being a single-player RPG first and foremost.
The Hogwarts Legacy subreddit is already expressing its concern that Warner Bros is going to take what could be a promising sequel and ram it full of live service nonsense. It's not an unfounded fear, given this is exactly what WB Games did with Middle Earth: Shadow Of Mordor sequel Shadow Of War.
Every time you think a publisher might have learned its lesson... we end up right back here. Watch this space.
Topics: Hogwarts Legacy, Warner Bros, Harry Potter