'Hogwarts Legacy' Developer Responds To Microtransaction Concerns

We finally got our first extended look at Hogwarts Legacy in action last night, and it's looking like the upcoming Harry Potter RPG is the real deal. A massive open world filled with secrets, classes to attend, spells to learn, potions to brew, and brooms to fly -the full Wizarding World experience.

Developer Avalanche Software finally officially confirmed that Hogwarts Legacy is coming this "holiday", which likely means anytime between October and December. That means there's plenty more to learn about the game over the next few months! But ahead of that, the team felt the need to clarify one aspect of the gameplay trailer that left some fans a little concerned.

Take a look at the Hogwarts Legacy gameplay trailer below!

During the gameplay reveal, we learned that players can use the Room of Requirement to craft and brew their own potions, or grow their own plants. In the trailer, we can see that several of the plants being grown are accompanied by a 25-minute timer, not unlike the kind of timer you'd find in a mobile game.

This set alarm bells ringing. Mobile games typically include timers like this to coax you into paying real-world money to speed the process up. Fans immediately expressed concern that Warner Bros. and Avalanche were implementing a similar system in Hogwarts Legacy, which would obviously be a bad look for a full-price AAA game.

Not long after the trailer aired, Avalanche community manager Chandler Wood took to Twitter to confirm that they had seen the question coming, and that they wanted to assure everyone there would be no microtransactions in Hogwarts Legacy.

We've seen this question coming up and want to set the record straight.

 There are no microtransactions in Hogwarts Legacy.

— Chandler Wood (@FinchStrife) March 17, 2022

Of course this does raise the rather obvious question: why bother putting mobile-style timers in the game at all? Unfortunately, when pressed by a fan on this very subject, Wood simply repeated his original statement. Very helpful, cheers.

It's certainly a strange move, and I'll be very interested to learn the reason for the in-game timers closer to release. If it's to ensure we don't become overly reliant on powerful temporary upgrades, fine! If it's for added immersion, I can see where you're coming from!

But why just explain that now, instead of leaving people to speculate over something that you know looks a lot like it's laying the groundwork for microtransactions?

And while Avalanche is saying now that Hogwarts Legacy won't include microtransactions, this wouldn't be the first time that a developer has made such assurances and then turned around at some point after launch and included them. For now, we hope for the best.