Seemingly changing their mind overnight, Portkey Games have confirmed that Hogwarts Legacy is now available for preload on PC.
The day before, Warner Bros Game Support was quoted that they had no plans to make preload available for the PC version of the game.
Today, the Hogwarts Legacy Twitter account shared this message:
“To all PC Players of #HogwartsLegacy, preloading is now available on Steam. This will be available for those playing during the Early Access Period and Global Launch. If you are not seeing the update please restart the Steam client.”
Keen observers will remember that Hogwarts Legacy is also available on Epic Games Store. There has been no indication that Epic Games Store players will also get this privilege.
But then, it also isn’t clear why the Hogwarts Legacy and Warner Bros Game Support accounts didn’t have the same information and answers to give to consumers. It certainly seems like there was a communication gap somewhere in Warner Bros Games.
They were much clearer last month in stating that Hogwarts Legacy would be Steam Deck Verified, but on the launch date. There don’t appear to be any roadblocks or limitations that would make it so that Hogwarts Legacy early access players would not be able to download the game on their Steam Decks now, but there also aren’t that many players stating that they are playing the game on the platform now.
In any case, this early access may be more important for influencers and whales who paid to get to play the game before everyone else. There were some players who even went through the trouble of spoofing their location so that they could get the very earliest access of the game on the first time zone allowed to play it, New Zealand. In a matter of days, this matter of early access will no longer be relevant, as the period allotted to it is comparatively short.
We had already known for some time that Hogwarts Legacy would be a massive release. It had remained on the top spot of most wishlisted games on Steam for many months. That wait has ended for some, and will be considerably satiated later this week.
Hogwarts Legacy will be available on February 10, 2023, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. It will be published on April 4, 2023, on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. It will come to the Nintendo Switch on July 25, 2023.