Despite loving video games for my entire life, I have spent long chunks of time completely disconnected from the broader gaming community. I play a lot of single-player games. Few of my friends play anything besides the biggest releases. Outside of when I was on GameFAQs a lot in my younger years, I generally had little idea what the big hot topics were in the gaming realm for over a decade.
I managed this despite being on Twitter almost since its inception, thanks to various journalism classes I was in requiring it. I mostly used the app to follow sports and politics, but I did have a few gaming follows just to keep up with news. For the most part, though, I rarely saw much gaming in my feed besides when a big game’s review scores would come out or news from big showcases.
One of the first times I can ever remember gaming discourse truly breaking containment and really invading my feed was around the launch of Hogwarts Legacy. I don’t know what it was, but my feed was filled with people calling for a boycott on the game because of the transphobic views of JK Rowling. I saw many people saying that you are a bad person if you play the game.
I can completely understand why this attempted boycott was pushed. JK Rowling is a very bad person in my view, and if you are trans, her actions are a direct attack on your existence. I think we all have companies or people that have crossed a line with us that cause us to not do business with them. I personally don’t shop at Home Depot or Hobby Lobby because of things those companies or their founders have done. But realistically, those stands rarely amount to much. I know plenty of people who don’t shop at those places either, but it hasn’t stopped either store from being wildly successful.
Those very small stands I take are made possible by two simple things. Convenience and probably plenty of ignorance. I live in a relatively populated area, so it is pretty damn easy for me to avoid shopping at Home Depot. I have always had a Lowes closer to me. I literally don’t need Home Depot. But also, I don’t go out of my way to google every single company that I shop at. Lowes has likely done plenty of things that would piss me off, I just haven’t directly heard about them. If I lived in a country town, and the only home improvement store within 30 minutes was Home Depot, I’d probably be stuck shopping from them, much like I end up using Amazon here and there despite my best efforts to avoid doing so.
The idea of boycotting Hogwarts Legacy always rang a little hollow to me for a few reasons. First off, the reporting from inside the studio showed how the actual developers generally did not support her views (which is likely the reason the game had a transgender character). But also, realistically, the impact from Hogwarts Legacy flopping seemed like it would be minimal at best in terms of hurting JK Rowling. The Harry Potter movies are on cable seemingly every day. There is a Harry Potter theme park. I just looked, and Harry Potter books are still in the top 10 for “most read books” on recent Amazon charts. Also, one of the main places where people were calling for this boycott was on Twitter, which at that point had been taken over by Elon Musk, and he had espoused plenty of anti-trans beliefs as well (in addition to amplifying those voices in his algorithm). I’m not sure how much money JK Rowling stood to make from each copy of Hogwarts Legacy that was sold, but it all seemed like a serious drop in the bucket compared to her many other sources of income that she has at this point (she is a billionaire according to recent estimates).
In the end, despite these efforts, any attempted boycott didn’t make much of a dent. As of November 2024, it is reported that Hogwarts Legacy has sold over 30 million copies. It’s probably a lot more by now. I think it’s fair to say with those numbers that plenty of people who dislike JK Rowling and are sympathetic to trans causes are part of those sales.
Why Didn’t The Boycott Work?
I think there are several reasons why that boycott didn’t work. First off, all the reasons I already listed probably played a role. It didn’t feel like there was any path to actually hurting Rowling in any way real way by boycotting the game. Also, obviously, Harry Potter is really freaking popular. I think its an easy series to pick apart from a critical lens, but it has a world that a lot of people fantasized about living in, and has a lot of very well loved characters that people connect with. The books and movies were an integral part of people’s childhoods, and things like that aren’t thrown away easily. Especially when things like the films involve way more people than just JK Rowling. Similarly, the game was not a sole indie project from JK Rowling. I think a lot of people saw an opportunity to truly explore Hogwarts in a way that they never had before, and they couldn’t pass that up.
It likely became even harder to pass up when the game received extremely strong reviews. Hogwarts Legacy sits at an 84 on Opencritic, which is a very good score. I personally wouldn’t rate it that high, but it’s tough to deny that it’s a game with plenty of strong elements. This was the first big and modern Harry Potter game, and it was really well rated. That was never going to fail.
I did see some arguments that you could just play some other games in the open world RPG genre instead, but I think this argument does a disservice to the power of art. If I buy my power tools from Home Depot or Lowe’s, it literally makes no difference in my life. Passing up a game (or any art form) that someone would enjoy is a much tougher ask. Of course, there are better games than Hogwarts Legacy out there, but I can say that about almost any video game. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to experience new things and see what else is out there. It’s one of the things that gives me the most happiness in life.
Another potential reason is that national boycotts often galvanize the other side to support the product being attacked as well. A boycott getting too much publicity can almost completely even out, as people opposed to that side will show their support financially to offset the people that they hate. I’m not sure if that is the case here, as JK Rowling herself never seemed particularly enthused by the game (perhaps because of the aforementioned trans character), but I wouldn’t be shocked to find out that plenty of people bought the game as a show of support after the calls for a boycott.
Finally, I think people really underestimate how not online the vast majority of people are, or at least, not online in the hyperactive Twitter way. Most people don’t see every blip of news and know about every controversy. Once again, with the massive sales numbers, I imagine a good chunk of people didn’t think or even know one iota about calls to not buy the game.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that I’m not seeing the same arguments to boycott HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter series solely because of Rowling’s shitty views. The arguments I’m seeing more attack the show’s existence itself as pointless, and that argument seems to be 100% more effective. It’s impossible to play another game exactly like Hogwarts Legacy, but you can absolutely just rewatch the Harry Potter movies if you want a Harry Potter fix instead of watching a longer and completely rehashed version. People are much more receptive to arguments about why they shouldn’t consume something if it’s bad compared to moral reasons. Like it or not, it has been proven out time and time again.
Let’s Try It Again… And Again
Despite the lack of success with that boycott, that hasn’t stopped people on both sides from trying to rally people to not buy various games for various reasons. The right is absolutely obsessed with trying to take down games that they perceive as “woke.” Being “woke” could be as simple as not having a white male character or characters that have pronouns displayed. The right’s point is that “woke” games do not succeed and shouldn’t be made. Obviously, this isn’t true. Tons of games that meet the very small threshold to be called woke by these people are incredibly successful. Baldurs Gate 3 is a really easy counterpoint. They take credit for failures like Concord and Dustborn, which are games that flopped because they were poorly rated or were in crowded markets. I’d say that the right’s call to boycott games has been a consistent failure, and the only successes have been games that were doomed to fail either way.
Meanwhile, the left still has their own attempts to boycott games for reasons that are far more noble. The most recent has been calls to boycott Microsoft over its products being used to support the Israel army in their genocide in Palestine. Once again, I can understand this stance, but it always felt pretty doomed to fail to me. It’s difficult to ask people to boycott a company in their homes when they likely use that same company every single day in their workplace. It’s tough to go from using Microsoft Windows, Word, Excel, and Teams at work, and then suddenly cut out a service like Xbox Game Pass or Microsoft games at home. Especially when those services are such a small part of what makes Microsoft the massive company that it is. Microsoft’s stock has gone up 30% in the past 6 months, in large part thanks to the strength of its cloud services (which are also helping Israel). There has been pressure for Microsoft to stop, but the boycotts haven’t really made a dent. Employees, the media, and some investors who have been upset by this work have led protests that have put Microsoft under much more pressure than anyone who unsubscribed from Game Pass.
It Turns Out That Boycotting Piss Water Is Pretty Easy!
When I look at the very few national boycotts that seemed to have worked in recent years, I can point to one thing, and that is convenience. The most famous successful boycott I can think of was the call to boycott Bud Light after they had the audacity to use a trans person in one of their ad campaigns in a minor way. The boycott ended up costing Bud Light over $1 billion, according to estimates. As someone who mostly drinks shitty light beer when I drink alcohol, this boycott worked because it took absolutely no effort from anyone involved. All of those beers taste similar and are not priced very differently from one another. It is as easy as can be to just pick a different light beer. There are a dozen of those options at every local corner store out there.
I have found the boycott of Target for abandoning its DEI policies to be a bit more impressive. Target has acknowledged that these boycotts have affected their foot traffic, and it is at least one element of why the retailer is struggling right now. I imagine there are probably some people out there that only have a Target near them in terms of major retailers, but I think in most cases, it’s also pretty easy to just shop somewhere else. There are plenty of other stores with home goods, and some out there with both home goods and an actual grocery department to go with it. As someone who lives in the Midwest, I’ve never really had to shop at Target much, as I think Meijer is better in every way. However, Meijer, Walmart, and other retailers don’t exactly have their hands clean either when it comes to politics.
Unsatisfying Progress Is Better Than None At All
Maybe I’m not idealistic enough. But I feel like this era of social media has led a lot of people to believe they could truly make an impact in this world with their keyboard. Every single person has a potential microphone now that was literally unthinkable 15 years ago. I think at times, this has reduced the power of calls for actions because they are so frequent and always so dire. People start to tune things out. And I think that has happened here.
I can understand how it might seem pretty counterproductive and like a self-fulfilling prophecy to say that boycotts don’t work. But I also think that this general strategy has proven to be pretty ineffective when it comes to video games at this point. I think people need to try and find other ways to make change within video game companies happen or to find other ways to make an impact with communities that may be harmed because of a company. For one reason or another, gamers have proven time and time again that a game is likely not going to fail because of a boycott for a moral reason. I’ve certainly seen boycotts work because of things within the game that piss people off, but not for moral failings of company leadership.
I also think that when people get shamed for doing something like buying a video game, it ends up pushing them away from causes altogether. Yes, that is a weak minded reason to fall off of a conviction, but I’ve seen it happen too many times now to deny that it’s real.
I’m not sure what the answer is for making an impact, but I think smaller goals could actually be a lot more productive in the long run. I think encouraging people to wait a bit and buy a game used (or to borrow it from their local library) could actually create some impact in ways that shaming people has not. I think asking people to buy multiplatform games on non-Microsoft systems if they have multiple consoles could be a small way to make an impact.
But more than anything, I think encouraging people who have spent money on a company that is a bad actor to give to an appropriate charity afterward seems like something that might actually make a small impact on the world. I saw a few people call for this with Hogwarts Legacy, though not the majority, but it feels like something that could actually make an impact in people’s lives.
Does asking for those smaller things feel as good as calling for those with moral failings to be crushed? No, it does not. Will it feel like justice? Absolutely not. But the current methods aren’t working. And if we want to make a difference, the first step might just be to start a little smaller.
Big Nerd Gaming 
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