Hogwarts Legacy was first revealed at the PlayStation Future of Gaming Showcase in 2020 with a spectacular CG trailer that generated a significant amount of hype. After that initial reveal, news on Hogwarts Legacy slowed to a crawl, and eventually the highly-anticipated action-RPG set in the Harry Potter universe was hit with a big delay, pushing its planned release date from 2021 to an undetermined point in 2022.
Rumors and leakers seemed to think Hogwarts Legacy would be at every big gaming event in the subsequent months, only for those to come and go with no sign of the game. Finally, Sony announced a special Hogwarts Legacy State of Play presentation that featured a deep-dive into what fans can expect from the game once it arrives this holiday season. However, there was one element shown during the State of Play that had some fans worried about microtransactions.
During the Hogwarts Legacy State of Play presentation, fans got to see the player character participate in all kinds of magical Hogwarts activities. This included potion brewing, though the potions will be governed by timers. Timers like these are common in mobile games, which often let users spend real-world money to speed things up. Understandably, this led many to assume that Hogwarts Legacy would have microtransactions, but it's now been clarified that the game will not have microtransactions of any kind.
This was explained by Avalanche Software community manager Chandler Wood, taking to Twitter to address concerns about the possibility of Hogwarts Legacy having microtransactions. When pressed by a Twitter user as to why the timers exist in the game at all if there are no microtransactions, Wood did not clarify, but instead pointed them to back to his initial tweet about the game not having any microtransactions.
Fans can be forgiven for assuming that Hogwarts Legacy would have microtransactions, as previous games from Warner Bros. Interactive have featured some rather notorious microtransactions, and the timers seen in the video are often associated with in-app fees. Then there's the fact that Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery on mobile is built entirely around microtransactions, and both games are published under the Portkey Games label.
Now that Hogwarts Legacy gameplay has been revealed and it's been confirmed to be a proper single-player experience with no microtransactions, all fans have to do is wait to play it for themselves. Hogwarts Legacy does not have a specific release date at the time this writing, but it is expected to launch at some point this holiday season.
Hogwarts Legacy will launch later in 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.