There’s a new rumor that there could be a new Lego Harry Potter game on the horizon.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, the Warner Bros South Africa Instagram page posted an image of a Lego Minifigure of Harry Potter, with the date ‘8.25.23.’ The image also had the logo of TT Games.
Warner Bros was definitely emboldened by the successful release of Hogwarts Legacy, and also looking to utilize their other less controversial franchise in the Lego video games. But this could go sideways in so many ways.
There have been Lego Harry Potter games before. Lego Harry Potter: Years 1–4 and Lego Harry Potter: Years 5 – 8 were initially released in 2010 and 2011, respectively. The games were then rereleased onto new console generations together as Lego Harry Potter Collection.
However, the atmosphere where this potential new Harry Potter games will be released will be different from those of the original ones. The release of Hogwarts Legacy proved controversial, because Harry Potter creator JK Rowling suddenly went public with transphobic, and also right wing political views.
Warner Bros presumably managed the fallout from this potential scandal by running as much PR as possible to distance this game in particular from JK Rowling. Developer Avalanche Games even added a trans NPC to the main narrative as well, as an ally of the playable character.
Suffice it to say, even if Hogwarts Legacy turned out to be financially successful, Warner Bros is playing with fire by continuing to use the Harry Potter franchise in general. They can’t really predict which way popular sentiment will go on this in the future.
In any case, there is another side to this that could make it a disaster, and that’s the rumored involvement of TT Games. The issue broke last year that TT Games employees were subject to a mismanaged and abusive work environment, including forcing developers to crunch to make their games.
In the same way that Harry Potter was once an unquestioned popular franchise for children, TT Games was once well regarded as a good game developer, who could deliver great games based on big franchises that could please younger and older gamers alike. But just because they had made good games before, doesn’t mean it’s OK to look the other way when issues like this pop up.
Of course, investors should also be seeing red flags on this game as well, as the potential that it doesn’t get finished on time or turns out badly is high. After all, that’s the reason that Lego reportedly signed new contracts with Take Two Interactive to make new games, like Lego 2K Drive.
Ironically, there’s a long running rumor that this new Lego Harry Potter game will be made like Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was actually the game TT Games employees referred to when they became whistleblowers on the company’s abusive work environment.
We do hope that this project, if it is true, will turn out OK. But as of right now, this rumor has a lot of red flags around it.
