Former Hogwarts Legacy Producer Explains Why He Left Studio

At the start of this month, Hogwarts Legacy producer Troy Leavitt announced that he would be stepping away from Avalanche Software. The news of Leavitt's departure came at a time where he was receiving criticism from a number of various media outlets regarding the subject of some videos he posted to his personal YouTube channel. Leavitt said that his decision to leave Avalanche wasn't prompted by the news stories at all and that he would explain more of the situation later on. Now, Leavitt has shared more details of his side of the story.

In a new video shared to his own YouTube channel, Leavitt explained that his decision to leave Avalanche was one that was due to family issues in his personal life and it wasn't the result of articles that had circulated in the media about him. "I do not believe I will be able to take care of the family issues in my life while still giving the project the care and attention it deserves," Leavitt said in a message that went out to the staff at Avalanche recently. "That being said, I will continue to cheerlead Hogwarts Legacy from the sidelines as I wish for it to be gloriously successful."

Leavitt went on to explain in further detail that those at Avalanche and WB Interactive Entertainment have known about some issues in his personal life for well over a year. As of last January, he informed those at HR that he was going to work towards retiring in August 2020 due to a move that needed to take place. Rather than retiring outright, however, Leavitt says he took a break between August and October of last year to make this move and find a way to still stay on at Avalanche. However, in February of this year, things got worse once again and Leavitt says he started to once again consider outright retirement.

Going on to explain more of the situation, Leavitt also had nothing but good things to say about Avalanche and WB Games. At no point did the studio or publisher ever place any sort of pressure on him to depart from the company in the wake of the criticism that came his way in recent weeks. In fact, Leavitt says that those at WB even reviewed his video content when he first joined the company and they allowed him to continue publishing more videos at his own discretion.

Regardless of what you might think about this whole situation that happened with Leavitt, it seems pretty clear that his decision to depart from the Hogwarts Legacy team was solely his own. While he acknowledges that the articles that have come about within the past few weeks were a "catalyst" in the situation, they were "not the cause" of why he left. "I never felt like my job or my position was truly threatened," Leavitt explained.

As for Hogwarts Legacy itself, the game was originally slated to arrive this year but was recently delayed into 2022. Whenever it does end up launching, it will be coming to PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.