Twitch chat makes streamer cry for playing Hogwarts Legacy

Couple had to stop broadcasting

Girlfriend Reviews, a couple streaming on Twitch, had to stop playing Hogwarts Legacy after Twitch chat made one member of the duo cry by hurling abuse at her for broadcasting the open-world RPG. The newly-released game has been highly praised by critics, but landed amid a wave of controversy due to book author J.K. Rowling’s views about transgender people. This led to boycott calls against the title – see our explainer of the Hogwarts Legacy controversies for details.

Due to the controversial nature of the online debate around the game, streamers and reviewers have been hit with online abuse for broadcasting the title or writing about it.

Hey guys! I see a lot of you are not feeling this choice! If you go to our stream you’ll see we are raising money for the Trevor Project while we play this game we spent no money on. We’ll play it (again, for free) so you can know how it is without having to!

— Girlfriend Reviews (@itsgfreviews) February 6, 2023

Things got so bad during the stream of Matt and Shelby, who make up Girlfriend Reviews, that Shelby had to step away from the broadcast, sounding like she was on the verge of crying as she suggested to take “a little break or something.” Before that, Matt had already stated that he was “almost thinking of just going offline. I’m barely into the second combat here and every time I look at chat, the conversation is just bothering me.”

Matt then suggested that Shelby should take a break while he finishes the combat. Chat kept calling the couple “bigots” and other things throughout the broadcast, even after being put in subscribers-only mode – people literally bought the subscription to keep the torrent of abuse up.

A clip from the stream made it onto the LivestreamFail Subreddit, where people were largely sympathetic to the couple. “These guys are so wholesome too, it sucks to see them getting harassed like this. They caught a lot of shit for defending TLOU2 from one side and now they’re getting it from the other side for this game”, commented one user.

Another user wrote: “Seriously some of the nicest, funniest people making gaming content. Very much not deserved. I get not supporting the game for whatever reasons, but leave regular people alone, folks. Nothing positive is achieved with this.”

Opponents of Hogwarts Legacy even created a website to let people check which streamers on Twitch ever played the game. It looks like anyone planning on creating content around the title on a public platform will have to prepare for similar treatment.

For our impressions of the game, check out our Hogwarts Legacy review.