The reason for the glaring lack of Quidditch in the controversial RPG Hogwarts Legacy seems to be clear now: Warner Bros. Games just announced Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, a new game set in the wizarding world that centers around the beloved fictional sport. The announcement Tweet also promised “limited playtest signups” with a link to fill out a form for a chance to play the upcoming title, which has no release window just yet.
Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions is in production from WB Games, Portkey Games, and Unbroken Studios, the latter of which is working on the recently delayed Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League. WB Games and Portkey Games were behind Hogwarts Legacy, the open-world action RPG that, while extremely successful, had whiffs of the universe’s moral ambiguity. The game also had decent broom-flying mechanics but was conspicuously lacking Quidditch. It seems Quidditch Champions is WB Games’ answer to that lack, though from the game’s visuals it’s clear that the studio is going for a more stylized, cartoon-ish visual style rather than Legacy’s more grounded aesthetic.
Read More: The RPG Elements In Hogwarts Legacy Undermine Its Magic
Signing up for the Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions playtest feels a bit like you’re being grilled on your Harry Potter and video game knowledge by a millennial with a Death Eater tattoo wearing a baby named Draco strapped to their chest. The form asks you to rank your interest in Harry Potter and games set in its world on a scale from zero to 10, with 0 showing that you “dislike Harry Potter and would never play a Harry Potter game” and 10 indicating that you “love Harry Potter and would play any Harry Potter game.” There’s no number on that scale that indicates you once loved Harry Potter but grew out of it because you’re in your thirties and don’t like trans-exclusionary radical feminists like J.K. Rowling.
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Along with indicating your allegiance to the Harry Potter universe, the form also asks what your motivations for playing a game are, and asks you to approximate how many hours you’ve played in different genres like looter shooters, MOBAs, battle royales, and sports games.
After filling out the form, you’re offered the option to sign up for the official Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions Discord, which offers a few more details about the upcoming title. You’ll be able to play as one of the four positions (Chaser, Seeker, Beater, and Keeper) and it seems that the game wants you to specialize in one of them, sort of like in a hero shooter. You can customize your Quidditch player, as well.
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Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions has also apparently been in production at Unbroken Studios for “several years” and is “presently in limited playtests.” It’ll require an internet connection to play it, which leads me to believe you can’t play offline games against bots, but it seems to have some form of matchmaking to help you find other teammates. The FAQ on the official Discord mentions J.K. Rowling several times, a stark reminder that we can’t escape the real-life witch or the haphazard world she spun in an Edinburgh coffee shop all those years ago. After all, despite Rowling’s anti-trans rhetoric, the Harry Potter franchise is thriving: HBO is working on a TV series that will retell the story of the books, and no, they won’t talk about Rowling’s transphobia.
Interestingly, the studios decided to put “Harry Potter” in the title, rather than Hogwarts, which could mean either that the game will incorporate the protagonist in some manner, or that they did some Google searching and found Harry had more search volume than Hogwarts. Either way, it’s more money in Rowling’s pockets.
Kotaku reached out to Warner Bros. Games and Unbroken Studios for comment.
