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Oops: Left's Attempt to Boycott 'Harry Potter' Video Game Backfiring Badly Before It's Even Released

 By Joe Saunders  January 17, 2023 at 1:20pm
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The left despises her, but the creator of the “Harry Potter” universe still has the magic touch.

J.K. Rowling, the publishing juggernaut who built a billion-dollar fortune with her story about a young wizard and his fantastic world centered on the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, has been an archvillain for transgender activists for years.

But as the controversy — and sales — surrounding the release of a forthcoming video game based on Rowling’s creation shows, she’s not going to be stopped.

“Hogwarts Legacy,” a video game that tells “an original story in the Wizarding World,” won’t be released until February but is already in a position to be the best-selling game of 2023, according to GameRant, an online publication that covers the gaming industry.

On the PC video game distribution service Steam, “Hogwarts Legacy” was the No. 1 seller on Tuesday (topped on the chart only by the free-to-play “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive”).

Its deluxe edition was the best-selling game on Amazon for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S on Tuesday, with the standard edition coming in at No. 6 for both consoles.

All of this comes amid condemnation of the game from various leftists intent on making Rowling pay for her heresy when it comes to the transgender faith.

As an all-too-sympathetic BuzzFeed reported in December, calls to boycott “Hogwarts Legacy” began in earnest when transgender activist Jessie Earl (known as Jessie Gender on YouTube) went onto social media to claim that support for the game is “harmful.”

That got Rowling’s attention. She responded with biting sarcasm:

“Deeply disappointed @jessiegender doesn’t realise purethink is incompatible with owning ANYTHING connected with me, in ANY form. The truly righteous wouldn’t just burn their books and movies but the local library, anything with an owl on it and their own pet dogs,” she wrote.

Rowling’s views on the brainwashing of the transgender movement are a refreshing change from the leftist orthodoxy that usually dominates the entertainment field. (She’s regrettably leftist on most other matters, such as the “right” to abortion.)

But what to left is unacceptable, to normal people sounds like common sense. Here’s what Rowling posted to Twitter back in 2019, commenting on the case of a woman fired from her job at a think tank for failing to toe the transgender line:

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That “sex is real” statement and her refusal to back away from reality since has made Rowling a pariah of the “tolerant” left, even among the stars of the “Harry Potter” franchise, who literally owe their good fortune in life to her brains.

So when it comes to a new product such as the “Harry Potter” video game, it’s only to be expected there would be calls like this:

And blah, blah, sniffle, sniffle, blah.

It’s clearly not having much of an effect. And judging by many of the social media responses, it’s actually backfiring, badly.

It’s not all that surprising that any talk of a boycott against a “Harry Potter” franchise product was doomed to failure.

Rowling’s books alone have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide.

Does this make you want to get the "Hogwarts Legacy" game?

The movie series based on the books was astonishingly successful, with a worldwide box office in the neighborhood of $10 billion.

Obviously, what she’s selling is what fans want — readers, movie viewers and now gamers.

The fact that some radical leftists — the kind with purple hair and childish priorities — are telling them not to buy it just makes it all the more appealing. If Rowling isn’t intimidated, neither are her customers.

The more appealing it is, the more it’s going to sell, and the more money its creator will make.

That’s not just the magic of J.K. Rowling. It’s the magic of capitalism — and freedom.

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Joe Saunders
Story Editor
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American




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