The massive excitement surrounding the imminent release of Hogwarts Legacy has been overshadowed by the differing treatment of PC and console players for those planning on embarking on their wizarding journey on PC. Frustration among PC players has accumulated since more information about the differences between the platforms has emerged.
“We’re genuinely paying the same/similar for a lesser experience,” one Reddit user said about the situation. And it’s not just that PC players get an unequal launch experience, but also that they are given less content in the game.
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Those who are planning to play Hogwarts Legacy on PC will be missing out on quite a bit. The first major difference that PC players noticed was the PlayStation-exclusive content.
PlayStation players get the most benefits with the first one being a Felix Felicis potion recipe, which fans likely remember from the fifth Harry Potter film and book as a potion that grants the drinker immense luck for a period of time. This certainly sounds like it would be fun to experience gameplay with, but only those who pre-order Hogwarts Legacy on a PlayStation console have access to the potion.
Easily the most exciting bonus content of all is the exclusive Haunted Hogsmeade shop quest that is also only available for PlayStation players. This quest will allow players to delve into a creepy horror story within the wizarding world and even grants players who complete it a shop where they can sell their assets for a better price than anywhere else in Hogwarts Legacy.
The Haunted Hogsmeade quest will eventually become available for all players on other platforms, but it will be an entire year before the quest is no longer PlayStation exclusive and thus playable for those playing Hogwarts Legacy on other platforms.
While missing out on both pieces of bonus content had PC players a little upset, most of them were still fine since they at least knew that the Hogsmeade quest would eventually be playable for them. But when PC players found out that they were also going to endure being treated differently in more ways leading up to the game’s launch, many of them began to express their disdain.
PC players are now expressing how upset they are in regard to the early access period and preload function. The Hogwarts Legacy team recently revealed the official early access start times by region and surprised players by sharing that those on console also get earlier access than those on PC.
Depending on the region that PC players are in, the difference in the early access time of console players versus when PC players get to begin their wizarding journey is nearing an entire day for some players. Any player who purchased the deluxe edition or the collector’s edition of Hogwarts Legacy was promised three days of early access, but now this early access seems to be all over the place and less than what was promised for many PC players.
In addition to this, both PlayStation and Xbox players can preload Hogwarts Legacy ahead of time while PC players won’t be able to download the game until their early access period begins. No preload means that many PC players won’t even get to enjoy the early access time that they are given because they’ll be stuck waiting around for the download to finish.
The discouraged PC players have expressed their frustration at the entire situation on both Reddit and Twitter. Generally, PC players seem to be most frustrated at the lack of a preload function for them combined with the later early access period in comparison to console players. This is because many of them think that it will take Hogwarts Legacy a long time to download and that they are worried about the quality of their internet slowing the already massive download down even further.
“All of this would be annoying but not terrible if we could just preload,” one Reddit user said.
Since the news about the early access period differing by platform and the lack of a preload function for PC players were revealed, PC players have been trying to have their concerns heard by the Hogwarts Legacy team, but no responses have been received yet.
