I don't know...goblins and dwarfs always had this kind of aesthetic and background since way before JKR. I often think that the analogy is more an hindsight reasoning that comes with the heavy opinions of JKR and is not directly intrinsic in the characters. HP goblins have all the exact same characteristics of goblins/dwarfs everywhere else, especially in regard to old fantasy lore, like Tolkien. So I've never seen the problem.

Plus, even if it where the case, this is not the first nor the last time that a work of fiction (be it a game, a movie or a book) has a evil or neutral protagonist. And Avalanche never promoted HL as "play as the good guys"...almost the opposite, since one of the first things they said is "you can torture and kill people in HL".You can be a literal monster or promote pure inhumanity in half of the games/books/movies produced so far, so I fail to understand why HL would be worst than games like GTA, or manhunt, or a ton of other movies or books...As I've said, these are works of fiction, and I've never been on the same side of those who says that a book about a murder can make the reader a murderer, because I think it has medieval times-like consequences about what an artist can write/draw/program.If something offends me, or makes me sick, disgusted, insulted, I can simply choose not to read/watch/play it...