As per SteamDB, the Harry Potter-based action role-playing title Hogwarts Legacy achieved one of the biggest single-day releases for a PC game on Friday, amid controversy and boycotts by players about whether or not to support J.K. Rowling’s property due to statements opponents have condemned as transphobic.
As of 1 PM PST on Saturday, SteamDB, which keeps track of concurrent players on the PC platform Steam, has counted 783,277 people playing Hogwarts legacy, making it the second-largest player count in a 24-hour period.
The game trails only PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, which ranks #1 all-time with a 24-hour high of 1,320,219. This is the third-highest rated single-player game on Steam, after Elden Ring (953,426) and Cyberpunk 2077, and the eighth-highest Steam sales peak of all time (1,295,114)
This number is 1.28 million in total. Developers claim that many individuals watched Hogwarts Legacy video on Twitch on February 9, making it the most-watched single-player game in Twitch ever. Although it topped the sales statistics for the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X/S before the game’s debut on Friday, the exact number of individuals who played it on those platforms is unclear. During its first weekend of release, the game is projected to sell at least 10 million copies, according to industry analysts.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s open-world video game Hogwarts Legacy was met with criticism because of the company’s association with J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books on which the game is based. Many have called Rowling transphobic for her tweets in recent years expressing her views on birth sex and transgender rights. In response, organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and celebrities like those from the Harry Potter films have spoken out in favor of transgender individuals. The game features the first transgender woman character in the Harry Potter world, although she (Sirona Ryan) has drawn controversy since her name purportedly sounds male. Fan – favorite review sites Kotaku, Polygon, and Eurogamer originally declined to review the game in outrage. Despite this, others have pointed out that the Celtic goddess of health and rebirth is also associated with the name Sirona.
