Since its unveiling last year, Broomstick League’s obvious similarities with Harry Potter’s Quidditch have never gone without mention. Of course, this was touted as a highlight. Who doesn’t want a Quidditch game? However, these comparisons, not to mention Broomstick League’s blatant play on Quidditch’s overall game design, likely caused more trouble than developers Code HQ, Blue Isle Studios, and Virtual Basement imagined. As of writing, the title has essentially been scrubbed from its official channels, such as Steam, Twitter, and the website, though it’s unclear as to exactly why.
Push Square spotted the game’s social media absence, noticing that its Twitter account simply exists no longer. Even the Broomstick League Steam page is out of commission, an especially odd turn of events considering it entered into Early Access this year. According to Push Square, a since-removed message on the page previously informed Steam users of the following: “At the request of the publisher, Broomstick League is no longer available for sale on Steam.” Finally, the website that the online sports title once called home has been vacated, as well.
On Steam, a developer post to the community was issued back on April 9, announcing that the game had been removed and servers turned off as of April 3, but no further reason was given.
We wanted to let everyone know that on Friday, April 3, 2020, we removed Broomstick League from Steam and turned off our servers. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to go into much more detail about our reasons why, but know that we are incredibly grateful for the help and support we saw from all of you.
This decision was not made lightly and we sincerely thank our community for the extraordinary support we received throughout Broomstick League’s development. We are currently working with our friends at Steam to issue full refunds to all existing customers.
This rather thorough scrubbing of Broomstick League’s prior existence obviously does not bode well for the console versions that were unveiled just last month. Perhaps said unveiling is what led the short-lived title’s doomed fate. After all, this bizarre situation suggests copyright issues could have been involved, presumably stemming from Warner Bros, the Harry Potter IP owner, catching wind of the pretty blatant rip-off. It’s also unknown if the current COVID-19 lockdown have anything to do with its removal. We’ve reached out to the developers for more information but have yet to receive comment as of this writing.
Regardless of what took place, one thing remains unchanged–Harry Potter fans still await a proper Quidditch experience on modern platforms. With speculation continuously swirling about WB’s supposed development of a Harry Potter game, perhaps the wait will come to an end before long. The most recent report on this matter suggests the publisher planned to reveal a new Harry Potter project at this year’s now-canceled E3.
[Source: Push Square]
