Hogwarts Legacy breaks half a million simultaneous players on PC — two days before launch

The conversation of Hogwarts Legacy has reached a fever pitch as the game is about to launch on February 10. Players and fans were able to get early copies of the game on Steam, and recent data shows that, despite the fervor surrounding the title, gamers are buying the latest entry in the Harry Potter universe. The data reveals Hogwarts Legacy peaked with 489 thousand concurrent players on Steam. Remember, these are pre-release numbers, meaning we could see that peak go even higher on launch day.

SteamDB provided the numbers of concurrent players on Hogwarts Legacy, showing the game has been consistently hovering around half a million players today. This Steam data goes along with the recent reports that Hogwarts Legacy’s early access streams have broke a Twitch record and amassed over 1.3 million viewers on Twitch. This, of course, stands in contrast to the sizeable group of people who’d perform to boycott the game due to author JK Rowling’s transphobic rhetoric.

The Harry Potter series has always been one of the most profitable media franchises in the world, but the controversy surrounding the original author has cast a large shadow over the series. JK Rowling, who wrote the original Harry Potter novels, has been open about her transphobic stance via social media, spreading harmful opinions about the trans community and supporting unfounded claims about transitioning. This has led to many longtime fans turning their backs on the franchise, refusing to purchase anything associated with the Harry Potter name.

However, in the end, the call to arms against Hogwarts Legacy has done little to deter the title’s popularity. The developers of Hogwarts Legacy have tried to distance themselves from Rowling and downplay the author’s involvement in the game, claiming she has had no direct hand in the development. But since she’s the creator of Harry Potter, she will always get a share of the total profits.