According to a recent interview with EA’s director of marketing from 2000-2003, Kim Salzer, EA canceled a Harry Potter MMO. The game was reportedly “killed” because EA didn’t believe in the longevity of the mega-popular series’ IP. Harry Potter has of course continued to stay relevant for years after its 1997 book release. The franchise has spawned the incredibly successful, and now-classic film series, an innumerable amount of merchandise including beloved LEGO sets, a new film trilogy, and the upcoming RPG Hogwarts Legacy set to release in 2022.
A Twitch streamer by the handle @Brandolorian17 on Twitter interviewed Salzer and posted the video to Twitter. Salzer discussed the Harry Potter MMO and how it was killed before it could come to fruition.
In the interview with @Brandolorian17, Salzer said when asked about the game, “A big one for me, because I was so personally involved in it, and it’s such a huge IP that has lived on is an online massively multiplayer game for Harry Potter. We did all the research, we had the beta built out, it was a combination offline/online experience where we’d actually mail stuff to the kids, like prizes and ribbons and stuff like that. Thoroughly researched, very confident in the success of this. But it was killed, for lack of a better term, because EA was going through changes at that time and they just didn’t know or believe enough that IP would have a shelf-life longer than a year or two.”
Considering how iconic Harry Potter has become and continues to be, the idea of EA not believing that the franchise’s IP would not have a “shelf-life longer than a year or two” is staggering. Unfortunately, the game publishers cannot just pick up where they left off as EA no longer holds the rights to Harry Potter video games, Warner Bros does now.
Fortunately, the upcoming game Hogwarts Legacy is due to release next year for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PC. The open-world RPG is sure to satisfy fans of Harry Potter and its wizarding world.
