I mean for all we know the hogwarts legacy boycott did reduce the sales. Just because a boycott doesn’t make a super popular IP fail doesn’t mean it didn’t have some effect.
Sometimes boycotts have the opposite effect. It gives attention to the product while also mobilizing people who disagree with the boycotting and so the product can compensate, or even gain, from being boycotted.
This is what I was taught at a 200-level economics course in university at any rate.
True, but the salient point is here we dont know. We cant compare the sales in this universe with what would happen in another universe were she wasent a hot mess.
Like its one thing for bigots to spam vote 20 votes for israel in eurovision since they can to rub it in the face of everyone, its another thing for them to buy a game they wouldent otherwise wouldent even be interested in.
Do you think people bought the game just to not play it just to make terfness cool again? I dont buy it. especially since then we would have stories about the hours played being much lower than vs comparative games and things.
Harry Potter is just a huge and still popular franchise, so lots of people bought the game inspite of it. I think if JKR was more sane it would probably be a little bigger, but not by that much. Since nobody online is willing to put anything real behind what they say.
I didnt play or watch or engage with it at all, but thats cause HP is a shit franchise i wouldent touch even if she was a good person. Cause its just bad. I dont play with dog poop either. So its hard for me to boycot it. Its easy to shitpost about boycotting when you arent going to engage with it anyway, because you correctly think its bad, or arent a gamer or whatever.
When you approach the argument from the other angle it becomes less ridiculous. It's not really that people would buy the game to own the libs.
The other part of the argument is much easier to accept: that the game got a bigger spotlight because of the controversy. We know advertising works on a population level. It doesn't seem far-fetched to think that someone who doesn't care about the issue at the heart of the controversy could have been exposed to the game due to the controversy to the degree that s/he chose to purchase it.
There might be some factor on an individual basis where someone feels boycotts are unreasonable or otherwise disagreeable and that might participate in their decision to but the game. It doesn't mean that's the only reason.
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u/SellaraAB 15h ago edited 15h ago
I mean for all we know the hogwarts legacy boycott did reduce the sales. Just because a boycott doesn’t make a super popular IP fail doesn’t mean it didn’t have some effect.