The latest game in the Harry Potter universe, Hogwarts Legacy is not only extremely popular, it’s the most popular game everywhere.
A few days ago, Hogwarts Legacy was released to the public. While buyers of the Standard Edition of the game got their hands on the game on 10th of February, those who booked the Deluxe edition had a chance to play the game three days earlier. The reviews of the Hogwarts Legacy game were out shortly. It has gotten almost a universal praise.
However, critics don’t mean much if the user-base doesn’t support it. The game’s release is filled with controversy due to some comments made by the author of the Harry Potter books. This led to calls of boycott of the game everywhere by petty online keyboard warriors. This in spite of the fact that the game developers have said that the author has no role direct in the development of the game.
So much was the anger by these people, that it is said that they were even harassing the reviewers and warning them against reviewing or streaming the game online.
But online keyboard warriors don’t show or know the ground realities. Because it looks like the calls of a boycott has not succeeded at all. Because the game is selling extraordinarily.
Hogwarts Legacy Is Breaking Steam Records
The most popular online gaming store and library, Steam by Valve, has a page dedicated specifically for tracking top sellers on Steam in the Steam Charts. In it, Hogwarts Legacy is the top-selling game from 10 weeks now. Not a small feat. Especially for a single player story based game.
However, it’s not just sales, it’s topping the current players charts too. As per Steam, in terms of most played games, Hogwarts Legacy currently is the second most played game on Steam, with peak concurrent players reaching a massive 879,308, making it the second most played game currently. These numbers are not small.
As per SteamDB, a private Steam tracking site, Hogwarts Legacy is one of the top most played games ever on Steam if all time peak concurrent players are to be considered. That’s not it, if that list is to be believed, then it’s also the 3rd highest played single player game on Steam.
What’s interesting that these numbers can improve even further as the word of the mouth spreads. But Steam alone is not the only place which is showing great sales.
Hogwarts Legacy Is The Top Selling Game in UK
When we speak about a Harry Potter game, it would be unwise to ignore the UK, from where the Harry Potter universe comes from and is situated in.
As per Games Industry.Biz, Hogwarts Legacy is the biggest selling Harry Potter game launch of all time in terms of physical sales. The sales of Hogwarts Legacy is far higher than even the original Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone game. The article mentions how this is just physical sales numbers on consoles and the digital sale numbers, which will come later, will only increase the numbers significantly higher.
So popular is the game that as compared to previous year’s massively hit game Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy’s first week sales are 80% higher. It mentions how these are numbers just for the latest generation consoles, with the game set to release on previous generation consoles later.
Performance & VRAM Usage Issues In Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy is not without its problems. There have been some reports of performance issues in the game.
In Hogwarts Legacy Benchmark Test & Performance Analysis by TechPowerUp, they noticed a big problem in the VRAM usage. VRAM, for those unaware, is the memory found on the graphics cards. It is used to load textures in the graphics card’s memory. 8GB VRAM is possibly the average found in graphics cards these days.
As per TechPowerUp’s charts, Hogwarts Legacy is using a massive 9.8GB of VRAM at 1080p. With VRAM usage increasing further 11.8GB at 4K and 14.5GB if raytracing is enabled. No other game out there might be using so much amount of VRAM.
In another article, TechPowerUp mentions that the game is highly CPU intensive, especially with raytracing enabled. It also mentions how the game uses only a single thread on the CPU due to the bad implementation of the game engine. So it recommends upscaling options such as DLSS 3, FSR 2.1 or XeSS found in the game settings.
Additionally, players are also complaining about big FPS stuttering issues in some areas of the game. To fix these issues, a Reddit user u/FriedBongWater has shared detailed tips on how to prevent those issues, including fixing the settings by editing a text based game file.
This game has become too popular and massive to ignore these issues. We really hope the developers of Hogwarts Legacy release an update fixing the VRAM usage and FPS stuttering issues in the game.
Hogwarts Legacy is available for purchase on PC from Epic Games Store and Steam. We suggest everyone who is the fan of the Harry Potter series to buy it. But best to wait for an update, though.
