Former Lead Designer for Hogwarts Legacy, Troy Leavitt, has revealed that the unexpected death of Senior Programmer Dave Ross during the development of the Harry Potter game led to significant scaling back of social simulation features and a significant amount of work to be done. The death left a "hole" in the team, which was unable to fully fill quickly. Leavit also revealed that Hogwarts Legacy was originally intended to have deeper social simulation elements with NPCs on the map.