Many social activists are refusing to play the latest Harry Potter-themed video game, Hogwarts Legacy. But that doesn’t seem to have slowed down the title’s Twitch success.
The game peaked at more than one million concurrent viewers on Twitch today with many of the platform’s top creators playing it, including xQc, Lirik, and NICKMERCS. The success comes amid protests against the game because of author J.K. Rowling’s controversial opinions about transgender people.
Along with not playing the game, many social activists have started to cross lines by harassing streamers who play the game, and yesterday, one creator was even brought to tears. But those critics have quickly been met by pushback from top gamers on Twitch like xQc, Hasan, and Asmongold.
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Hogwarts Legacy officially releases on Friday, Feb. 10, but early access for the game has already begun. A large part of the game’s viewership success stems from marketing campaigns for the game in affiliation with Twitch and some of its creators.
While some popular streamers, like political commentator HasanAbi, don’t plan on streaming the game because they don’t want to deal with harassment from activists, many others are partaking in sponsored streams to promote the game.
Meanwhile, the Warner Bros. Gaming title has a Twitch drops campaign that rewards gamers with exclusive cosmetics just for watching gamers on Twitch play for a certain amount of time. This marketing practice has become increasingly popular on the platform when new games come out, and it regularly drives early viewership for new releases. But the ability to eclipse one million concurrent viewers, or even surpass Just Chatting, is no small feat.
At time of writing, XQc leads all streamers on the platform with 112,000 viewers and Spanish-language creator IlloJuan is second with around 85,000 viewers. Both channels are tagged as having drops enabled.
