We took a look into the Hogwarts Legacy Discord to see what people were saying about the game, now that many were starting to get their hands on the full copy. Instead of seeing discussions of the game, however, we were startled to see a new barrage of comments filled with antisemitic rhetoric and slurs as well as racially charged language.
Many of the posts were copy-pastas, comments or posts that are saved and then pasted into forums and chats as a quick meme or joke. Various minority groups were targeted from the Asian umbrella all the way to the Irish. Racial slurs also made their appearance common throughout the postings. Attempts were also made to spam NSDAP imagery, though this failed as the discord channel has a ranking system that prevents new members from posting images.
Not all of the spam was offensive, some of it just in the way, such as posting large text walls filled with the script to the movie "Shrek" or attempting to spoil the game, despite not enough time with it being out yet for any of the would-be spoilers to be known to the consumers.
The staff on the discord were quick to act, setting up a 10-minute cooldown on the main general chat so they could strike down and ban the offenders as they popped up. Though the volume of the raid and the ages of the accounts showed that the raiders were no stranger to using bots with pre-loaded scripts to rush discords they disagreed with.
A common theme of the raids was the co-spamming of the Transgender flag icon throughout the posts and as reactions to others posts. Many of the raid accounts using names decrying the "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling various sexist slurs. People were quick to catch on that the racism, sexism, and antisemitism was coming from a group of pro-transgender activists, likely upset that the boycott of the game did not have the intended effect, as the game went on to receive high marks from reviewers across the board as well as record sales on all platforms.
Other raiders were also making allusions to child predation and making sexual comments regarding minors on the discord, some as young as 10, and commenting on pornographic fanfictions regarding the underage characters of "Harry Potter." These comments were some of the fastest to be taken down alongside the Nazi imagery mentioned above.
It is a shame, and a disgusting irony, that those who claimed to be so outspoken against hatred are also the same who are far too eager to utilize it for their own means, shedding doubt on their claimed intentions and virtues. We at Virtizi hope that they can learn to be better.