Hogwarts Legacy protestors are sending spoilers to fans

Hogwarts Legacy is off to an enviable start, and it hasn't even hit the shelves yet. Those you see streaming their experience with the RPG are the ones who have shelled out for the Deluxe or Collector's Edition, and while they're among the first to play the game, critics are now sharing story spoilers in Hogwarts Legacy's official hashtag.

Your impressions of Hogwarts Legacy are likely to be influenced by the extent to which you agree with whether you can divorce art from the artist. In this case, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling's transphobic opinions have cast a long shadow over the game, though developer Avalanche Software has clarified the level with which it collaborated with her team. Several years ago, Rowling published an essay against the existence of transgender individuals, expressing that she is a survivor of domestic abuse and assault and that transgender activism aims to "erode 'woman' as a political and biological class."

In spite of the controversies, Hogwarts Legacy has been met with warm reviews and broke the record on Twitch for the most-watched single-player game. A website was set up to track those streamers and content creators who had played the game, irrespective of their awareness of Rowling's rhetoric, and two streamers were harassed endlessly even though they'd tried to negate the royalties that would have gone to the author with support from their community.

Take a tour of the Gryffindor common room below:

Now, the naysayers have opted for a different tack, using the official Hogwarts Legacy hashtag on social media and to tell players how the story ends. Hogwarts Legacy changes depending on the house that the character chooses and there are plenty of twists and turns in determinant decisions, so even if they had conferred with fellow early access fans, their own ending might be nothing like the majority's.

I won't add them here but a cursory search of "#HogwartsLegacy ending" on Twitter reveals a large number of posts describing what happens to certain pivotal characters regardless of the choices made. This debate will likely rage on for a long time as the rest of the PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series players get round to playing the game, so if you are planning to purchase it, I'd switch off your internet as soon as it is downloaded.