The ‘Harry Potter’ franchise breaking a 14-year record proves ditching J.K. Rowling is the magic spell for success

When J.K. Rowling really doubled down on her transphobic and highly controversial stock of opinions in 2022, it didn’t bode well for the Wizarding World franchise which hadn’t tasted true success since the eighth Harry Potter film. But evidently, it completely failed to derail a particular offshoot of the franchise.

I am definitely not talking about the Fantastic Beasts films, which died a slow, painful-to-watch death last year with Secrets of Dumbledore, even though a few of its stars did distance themselves from the author. Though the films had problems of their own, which ranged from poor plot lines to Ezra Miller, Rowling attending the premiere of the 2022 film majorly served to hasten the boycott of the film. Thus, amid the whole Rowling fiasco, the then-not-supposed-to-be-the-last-film became the tombstone of the Fantastic Beasts.

But not Hogwarts Legacy, the open-world action RPG that takes place in the world Rowling crafted for spinning the story of the Boy Who Lived.

Amid moral dilemmas over whether one should or could play the game if they were against the author’s problematic opinions as she would profit from the game’s success and severe boycotts that only amped up with accusations of the game intentionally promoting antisemitism and further transphobia, it was predicted that the immersive Harry Potter game would suffer badly and might tank as a result.

But obviously, Warner Bros. Games doing its best to vehemently stress Rowling’s non-association with Hogwarts Legacy andthe constant reminders that even her shadow didn’t touch the creation game worked its magic as January 2024 confirms the game broke a big record that had been in place since 2009 — that, too, by pushing the ones who have been keeping the record alive to the sidelines.

For 14 long years, either a Call of Duty game or a Rockstar Games’ contender won the title of the best-selling game of a respective year. In fact, Call of Duty games have almost always topped the list, apart from the two times a Rockstar Games title dethroned it. But now, as per data provided by Circana, Hogwarts Legacy has emerged as the clear winner of 2023 as the best-selling game — on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch ports, PS5, PC versions, and more — that bested the mighty Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. 

Hogwarts Legacy, which sold a solid 22 million copies by the end of 2023 after being played for a total of 707 million hours, has also won Best Game on Steam Deck. The massively positive feedback for the game has the developers planning a proper Potterverse video game world, with more additions like Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions.