Harry Potter video game bosses distance themselves from JK Rowling amid bitter transphobia row
The bosses behind the upcoming Harry Potter video game sought to stress that JK Rowling, the embattled author who conjured up the wizarding world, had no direct role in its creation.
Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world role-playing game, was announced in the throes of a bubbling backlash towards Rowling, whose new book features a ‘cross-dressing serial killer’, eclipsing months of the author sharing explosive views on trans people.
As Rowling’s seething views continue to divide Harry Potter fans, publisher Warner Bros Games distanced themselves from the writer, according to an FAQ on its website.
“JK Rowling is not directly involved in the creation of the game,” Warner Bros said, which is set to be released next year on the PS5, Xbox Series X and PC.
“However, her extraordinary body of writing is the foundation of all projects in the Wizarding World.
“This is not a new story from JK Rowling.”
Harry Potter video game aside, the new book by JK Rowling sees ‘crossing-dressing serial killer’ steal women’s underwear.
In recent months, Rowling has toggled between innocuously promoting her children’s book, The Ickabog, and posting embittered Twitter threads stuffed with what activists have branded as “dangerous” misinformation about trans people, chiefly the healthcare available to trans youth.
The flashpoint arrived when an early review of Troubled Blood fuelled alarm among LGBT+ people and anyone else capable of feeling emotion for its depiction of a cis male serial killer who steals women’s underwear and masturbates in them.
Dennis Creed – who imprisoned, tortured and beheaded seven women – is portrayed by Rowling as a cross-dresser who derives sexual satisfaction from wearing women’s clothes and steals jewellery from his murder victims.
He is depicted as using a “convivial, sexually ambiguous persona” to get close to women and ply them with drugs, confessing: “In a wig, bit of lipstick, they think you’re harmless, odd… maybe queer.”