Hogwarts Legacy is an emotional issue, so let’s deal with the facts. Firstly, the important one that has it back in the headlines - it was not nominated in a single category at The Game Awards. Secondly, it reviewed well at the time. And thirdly, it was highly controversial due to IP creator JK Rowling’s numerous public opinions on trans people. But is that final point the reason for its snub? I’m not so sure.

You have to remember that the same journalists who reviewed it highly are the ones who vote for The Game Awards. Certainly some journalists did not like the game, either because of its bland gameplay, the swirling social controversy, or in most cases, both. But you can’t vote against things at The Game Awards. You can’t submit Not Hogwarts Legacy and get five points taken off the game. If it had enough votes, it would be there. It didn’t have enough votes.

Few would consider Game of the Year itself and suggest Hogwarts Legacy has been overlooked. Baldur’s Gate 3, Tears of the Kingdom, and Alan Wake 2 are considered front runners, while Resident Evil 4, Spider-Man 2, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder all reviewed higher than Hogwarts Legacy. Even leaving out Resi as it’s a remake (a decision I would not agree with as a ground-up reimagining of the greatest horror game ever), then Final Fantasy 16 or Xbox’s duo of Starfield and Hi-Fi Rush would likely have been next in line.

There’s also the caveat that Hogwarts Legacy didn’t actually review all that well. A lot of high scores, sure, but it’s the 69th highest rated game of the year. That’s not snub material. ‘People who already love Harry Potter’ might not be a niche audience, but it is the only audience particularly swayed by Hogwarts Legacy. It was also aided by its February release date - with nothing around it, it had all the headlines - but may have been hindered here as the magic faded all those months later. Fire Emblem Engage, released the first week of January, still scored a nod though, so it’s not a given that early games miss out.

Games that have a higher Metascore than Hogwarts Legacy this year include: A Space for the Unbound (one nomination), Octopath Traveller 2 (zero nominations), The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood (zero nominations), Pizza Tower (one nomination), The Talos Principle 2 (zero nominations), Slay the Princess (zero nominations), and Jack Jeanne (zero nominations).

As for the genre categories, its generic gameplay propped up entirely by the ‘magic’ of its IP is its downfall here. It’s not an Action game, though some fans have suggested it might be. They’re wrong (Action games are high-octane shooters, hack ‘n’ slash, or character action titles) but the fact even fans are confused paints a picture of a game destined to slip through the cracks. It’s part Action-Adventure and part RPG, and as a result probably got a few votes in either, but not enough to beat things like Spider-Man 2 (clearly an Action Adventure) or Baldur’s Gate 3 (clearly an RPG).

‘Biggest’ snub is relative, but it’s by no means the only snub of the shortlist. 2023 is one of the best years for video game releases ever (backed up by maths) and games like Hogwarts Legacy, that would have been good enough for a nomination in the past couple of years, are feeling the impact of that. Starfield only got a single nomination, as did the aforementioned Fire Emblem Engage. Diablo 4 received zero despite huge praise for its aesthetics and narrative, while Marvel’s Midnight Suns (which missed last year’s cut off and became eligible here) was also shut out.

Then we come to the controversy the game has never been able to shake off. I consider it a non-factor in Hogwarts Legacy’s shut out. This ballot is secret, so there was no reason to ‘virtue signal’, to borrow the latest buzzword, by looking elsewhere. And even if some of the jury did avoid it because of JK Rowling, the fact the game reviewed well even while facing outside critique shows that significant swathes of the press were happy to overlook the controversy. They just didn’t vote for it in a year as stacked as this one.

Finally, as with the conversations leading up to the game’s launch, we get the chatter about the devs. How hard they worked, how unfair it is to punish them for JK Rowling’s actions. But The Game Awards is not a participation trophy. All those other devs worked hard too, the ones on games that got nominated in the right categories and the ones that weren’t nominated at all. It was a strange line when Hogwarts came out (you can’t buy every game just because the developers tried hard), and it’s even stranger now that we’re recognising the best of the year.

There’s no conspiracy here, or even a great snub. 2023 is just a stacked year and Hogwarts Legacy wasn’t good enough to cut through the noise. It’s not nominated because the jury thought the games they did nominate were better. There’s been a lot of chatter around snubs, but not much at all for any shock nominations. There were stacks of popular games this year, and the simple case is Hogwarts Legacy was one game too many.

Next: So Many Great Performances Have Been Overlooked At The Game Awards This Year