Hogwarts Legacy’s biggest omission, Quidditch, gets a new stand-alone game

The dedicated sport of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is getting its own (official) video game. On Monday, WB Games and developer Unbroken Studios announced Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions; it’s a fast-paced, competitive multiplayer game built on the preferred pastime of Hogwarts wizards and witches, coming to consoles and PC.

Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions will address a gap in the most recent game based on the franchise, Hogwarts Legacy, which notably did not feature a playable version of Quidditch. And that’s all Quidditch Champions appears to be, based on the game’s FAQ, which describes it as “a complete, standalone Quidditch experience” that “engages players in the sport of Quidditch and other broomstick adventures alongside friends in a competitive multiplayer setting.” Like Hogwarts Legacy, the characters of Quidditch Champions will be player-created.

WB Games says that Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions has been in development “for several years” by Los Angeles-based Unbroken Studios, which previously released the Mad Max-y battle royale game Fractured Lands and is assisting Rocksteady Studios with development of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

Players can sign up to playtest the game at the official Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions website. A release date for the game was not announced.

Like Hogwarts Legacy, WB Games notes in an FAQ that its new Quidditch game remains “true to [Harry Potter author] J.K. Rowling’s original vision,” but that the studio’s projects “have not been written by J.K. Rowling and will not be direct adaptations of the books and films.”

Some longtime Harry Potter fans swore off purchasing and playing Hogwarts Legacy based on Rowling’s other writing — namely a confrontational 2020 essay published on her personal website that spelled out her views on gender identity and her skepticism of transgender-inclusive laws and policies, and her reiterating of those views on her personal Twitter. Fans who play a version of Quidditch in real life have since chosen to distance themselves from Rowling and her work, renaming their interpretation of the sport to Quadball.

Hogwarts Legacy managed to sell above expectations, with more than 12 million copies sold in the first two weeks. Warner Bros. shows no signs of slowing down on its exploitation of the Harry Potter IP, either, with a new live-action adaptation of the seven-book series coming to HBO. Rowling will be directly involved in that project as an executive producer.

While other Harry Potter video game adaptations have featured Quidditch as a playable element, including Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4, the only other official game dedicated to the sport was 2003’s Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup, published for Game Boy Advance, GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. An unofficial, Quidditch-inspired game called Broomstick League was in development, but that title was pulled from Steam in 2020.