Troy Leavitt, lead designer on Hogwarts Legacy has announced his departure from Avalanche Studios. This comes after fans discovered Leavitt’s YouTube channel, which feature controversial views regarding gamergate and the #MeToo movement.

Leavitt made the announcement on Twitter, promising that further explanation would be coming in a video on his YouTube channel, the source of where the controversy began.

“I have made the decision to part ways with Avalanche Software. I have nothing but good things to say about the game, the dev team, and WB Games.”

In a follow up tweet, Leavitt insisted that he was not pressured into stepping down by anyone from Avalanche and WB Games. “To clarify: I felt absolutely secure in my position. However, I still wanted to resign for reasons that I will explain in that forthcoming video.” Leavitt continued by saying he is “very pleased” with the relationship he has with both Avalanche and Warner Bros. as he departs from the studio.

Word of Leavitt’s YouTube content was brought to light last month by Did You Know Gaming’s Liam Robertson. Robertson particularly highlighted Leavitt’s ‘In Defense of John Lasseter’ video, in which he downplays sexual harassment claims made against Pixar’s former creative chief; Leavitt proceeds to also discuss the #MeToo movement, which he describes as “moral panic.” Robertson also made it clear that this wasn’t an attempt to “cancel” anyone, but rather have help people make an informed decision on whether or not to support the project.

“I want to make something clear here – I’m not trying to “cancel” anyone. I just wanted to let people know this because I feel like it’s something people might like to know before deciding whether to support this project. This is all public info and there for anyone to find.”

In a video titled ‘Bushnell Did Nothing Wrong!’, Leavitt also alleges that his employers were made aware of his YouTube channel prior to joining, claiming that they were more focussed on making games than “pushing some kind of a social-justice agenda.”

The departure of the now former lead designer for Hogwarts Legacy does little to shift the cloud of controversy surrounding the Harry Potter spinoff title. With the game set in the world of J.K Rowling’s book series, fans were quick to point to comments the author made regarding the transgender community, something that will likely affect anything connected to the Harry Potter IP in the future. This combined with Leavitt’s YouTube history also prompted forum site ResetEra to ban any discussion which promoted the game.

Hogwarts Legacy, originally set to release this year, will come to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC sometime in 2022.