The new Warner Bros. title Hogwarts Legacy lets players finally receive their letter to Hogwarts and play out their childhood fantasies of living in the wizarding world. But many political activists are boycotting the game because of author J.K. Rowling’s views on transgender people.
Following the game’s early access release, those protests ramped up a notch as some viewers on Twitch have started to harass content creators who play the game. The abusive behavior has already drawn ire from people like xQc and HasanAbi, the latter of whom claims to have one of the largest transgender audiences online.
Now, the platform’s foremost expert on MMOs, Asmongold, has stepped up to speak out against the online harassment. Along with calling out the behavior, Asmongold added a simple solution for streamers—just ban them.
“Please, people that are streamers and content creators, never engage with this stuff,” he said. “Don’t waste your time. Don’t invest your emotional energy. Don’t get angry about it. Don’t try to win these people over. Don’t try to explain why they’re wrong. Just instantly ban them. Give them no attention, and anybody else who complains about it, ban them too.”
Many creators have started to respond publicly to the online harassment of people playing Hogwarts Legacy after the girlfriend from the channel GirlfriendReviews started crying on stream because of harassment from chatters. And before he went live today, Asmongold noted on Twitter how reductive the behavior is, adding that anyone dishing out those comments is a “piece of shit.”
“There’s no world where this is acceptable,” he said. “I don’t know what happened to people on the internet that they think that their disagreement with somebody … that the other person has to listen to them. Who gives a fuck what you think. You’re a name on the screen. You’re an NPC.”
