Controversial Design Lead Leaves Hogwarts Legacy Developer

Early last week, Hogwarts Legacy — which is already double-cursed for being made by WB and being associated with J.K Rowling, who’s now better known by her fans for her TERF-ness than anything she may have done for the realm of fiction — was hit with another controversy when it was discovered that their lead designer, a fellow named Troy Leavitt, had a (now largely unused) YouTube channel where he expressed some passionate anti-feminist and anti-SJW views. Worse, he revealed that Warner Brothers knew about these videos, and decided to hire him anyway — in spite of the fact they could reflect an attitude that would have been right at home at, say, Ubisoft.

Well, earlier yesterday, Troy Leavitt announced via Twitter that he’s actually leaving Avalanche Software and the Hogwarts Legacy project. Why? Well, I’ll let his Twitter explain it:
 

“1. I have made the decision to part ways with Avalanche Software. I have nothing but good things to say about the game, the dev team, and WB Games. 2. I will be releasing a YouTube Video about this soon on my channel....

...To clarify: I felt absolutely secure in my position. However, I still wanted to resign for reasons that I will explain in that forthcoming video . I’m in excellent spirits and very pleased with my relationship with WB and Avalanche.”

This doesn’t tell us a lot. One could safely assume his decision to quit was directly related to the controversy surrounding his previous videos… but WB wasn’t planning on firing him, and clearly his views weren’t enough to interfere with production, as revealed by the recent announcement that you could play a transgender character in the game. So the possibility exists that this is just a coincidence — he was going to leave anyway, and he’s just decided to link his leaving with the controversy to get some easy view in a new video.

We won’t know until that video is out… and someone else reports on it.

I’m not that interested in watching it myself