Former director says a Harry Potter MMO was 'killed' by EA

 Harry Potter MMO - The three main characters of the films point wands at you
(Image credit: Warner Bros)

In a recent interview on Twitch, former VP of global brand management for Activision and director of product marketing for EA Kim Salzer discussed the project that got away, the game she worked on that was never released: Harry Potter, the MMO.

"We did all the research," Salzer says, "we had the beta built out. It was a combination offline and online experience where we'd actually mail stuff to the kids, like prizes and ribbons and stuff like that. [It was] thoroughly researched, very confident in the success of this. But it was killed, for lack of a better term, because EA was going through some changes at that time and they just didn't know or believe enough that that IP would have a shelf-life longer than a year or two."

Per Linkedin, Salzer was director of product marketing at EA from 2000 to 2003, the period when the first two movies were released and Potter-mania took off. In retrospect the idea that Harry Potter, a cultural force that remains tediously dominant today, would have fizzled out in "a year or two" seems hopelessly naive. Or perhaps it was just wishful thinking.

Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world RPG set in the late 1800s, is currently in development at Avalanche Software and scheduled for a release in 2022. Apparently you'll get to make your own witch or wizard, and play through an original story not written by J. K. Rowling. For something you can play right now, a better option would be the Witchcraft and Wizardry Minecraft mod, which is an entire RPG built in Minecraft that lets you learn magic and explore Hogwarts.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
Best Hogwarts Legacy mods
Hogwarts Legacy goes Harry Modder to become the first Warner Bros. game with official support, and by the way has now sold over 30 million
Deek speaks to the player character in the Room of Requirement
Warner is still talking about Hogwarts Legacy as it commits to basing its future games on 'tentpole franchises that have each generated over $1 billion'
Orc man looking pensively at camera
Former EA exec says the ailing mega-publisher missed a chance to snag Blizzard and other heavy hitters before Activision: 'EA saw all those first and passed on all of them'
Greg Zeschuk attends Star Wars: The Old Republic launch at Best Buy in Times Square.
BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk considered taking over EA 'from the inside', but he was thwarted by an MMO
Batman broods
Rocksteady is looking to make a new singleplayer Batman game, but Warner's Wonder Woman game is struggling
A Warhammer 'live service RPG' made in Unreal Engine 5 was apparently canceled after three years of development
Latest in MMO
Blue Protocol players dancing minutes before the game closes forever
What will we do at the end of the world? If MMOs are any indication: mostly what we already do, plus a lot of dancing
Several tight-wearing superheroes surge towards the camera in a heroic fashion in City of Heroes.
One year later, City of Heroes' officially recognized fan server has me praying it's the future of dead MMOs
Several adventurers in World of Warcraft Classic's hardcore server crying over the death of a fallen comrade.
Blizzard plans to revive WoW Classic Hardcore characters 'at our sole discretion', after DDOS attack puts major streamer guild OnlyFangs in the ground
A forester from Old School Runescape, contemplating life next to his pheasant friend on a green field.
You can finally try out Old School RuneScape’s first new skill in nearly two decades right now
Ghoul in sunglasses
After years of playing as stupid, boring humans in Fallout, you can finally channel your inner Walton Goggins and become a ghoul in Fallout 76
WoW Classic: Season of Discovery
World of Warcraft Classic’s Season of Discovery may be teasing a legendary weapon that players have speculated is in the game for two decades
Latest in News
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway