IGN's Dead Cells Review Has Been Removed

@militantfreudian: He's guilty as hell or we're looking at the biggest coincidence in history.

Yeah it's pretty blatant

I saw the video, and the similarities are undeniable. I suppose I'm just waiting for an official statement from IGN, or something.

@the_greg: I think that's the stance everyone is at. Unfortunately as many will know the potential of how vile and scary it could get is huge, I'm reasonably confident that it shouldn't be that huge of an outcry from the internet mob but I've been surprised at the lengths people will go over the least consequential stuff.

Either way he messed up bad and I don't think anyone wants him to get away with it too easy.

@the_greg: We call it "videogame journalism" but thats just a colloquial shorthand everyone adapted. Anyone, literally anyone, can come in and start writing reviews for these sites, and very often that is exactly what happens. As much as we all like and respect the GB staff, who out of the bunch actually has a degree in journalism? Brad is the closest as an english major but thats about it. Jeff writes really great and concise reviews, has been doing so for years, and he never even went to college. Let's be honest, videogames aren't really serious business and you don't need to be a high-felutant wordsmith to pen a 1000 word review for Mario Odyssey - I mean it helps if you are, but the bar is much, much lower.

If only this was a Marvel movie review, then IGN would have dedicated a couple hours of coverage to it.

Hearing them both at the same time makes it sound like someone is having a buzzword competition. Too bad someone felt the right to copy someone elses work, and I'm glad IGN acted on it swiftly.

@humanity: Yes, you're right, but I still think you must have to show a credible history or portfolio of work to get into a company that is as big as IGN. I mean big in both size/scale and presence.

Again, I know nothing about how it works. This is complete speculation.

I feel bad for the guy in the sense he’s getting a lot of horrible internet shit thrown at him, but if you are at IGN and you take that job even remotely seriously he has to be fired. It sucks that someone needs to lose a job but if you are a writer caught plagiarizing how can you ever be trusted again. Unlike school papers, reviews are based on personal experience and thoughts you can’t cite sources in a review.

@humanity: I'll take an honest and straight to the point review à la Jeff Gerstmann above any drivel that it's published at Polygon. I don't even remember the last time that someone finished a game during their review on Polygon.

@therealturk: Absolutely, also, becoming an influencer has 0 to do with following rules or doing anything even half decent in school so who is to say what he learned or knew from school. Not that they can't be straight A perfect students, but they don't have to be either.

@the_greg: Yah I hear yah, and I'd hope the hiring process would be something as intricate as you mention but who knows, personally I don't know anything about it either. From an outsiders perspective it does look like a lot of it hinges on who you know, and generally the same few people jump from one site to another until they eventually end up at Twitch or some big game studio working as PR or community manager. I think Tina Amini has hit some sort of gaming outlet bingo at this point - and I don't mean to cast any "shade" on her or anything, just that she has switched places quite a bit and when people switch places that means someone fresh to the industry isn't getting hired. Makes sense to hire people already in the know, but it also sucks for those that want to break into the industry with so few spaces available. Even GB through it's long hiring process settled on Ben for the West office, which once again makes sense, but at the same time was a little disappointing that they didn't get someone completely new.

@drakoji Right there with ya. After a few articles I read on Polygon I realized that website just isn't for me. In fact it has made me actively dislike Arthur Gies and I don't even know the guy.

this 1000% as long it is not death threats have at him.

Makes you wonder what a frantic nightmare the review process @ IGN must be. What other reason to resort to plagiarism when it's such a straightforward task of writing down how you feel about the game? It's not even a game that asks you to play 80 hours of it before you can really form an opinion on the storyline and how it all wraps up in the end.

@onemanarmyy: Maybe he couldn't beat it, freaked out, and got desperate. Maybe he's just a sorta lazy scumbag, didn't give a shit, and didn't think anyone would notice. Impossible to know for sure.

That said, I'm hesitant to blame IGN as a whole because I feel like I've seen Dan Stapleton explain the inner workings of iGN enough on reddit that it's impossible for me to believe that place is constantly if ever on fire. They're IGN so I'm just gonna assume they got their reviews codes on time and chances are high the person reviewing it specifically asked to review it or implied when he was hired that the type of game in question is something he would be able to handle. As far as I know, IGN doesn't force games on people if they aren't capable of handling it. Despite their size, they still use contractors if they feel there's a need.

I hate sounding like the "IGN defense force" or some shit lol, but I'm just calling it like I see it. I would bet any amount of money that the fault lies with that one employee and no one else.

Looks like IGN has fired Filip for plagiarism

Jason Schreier reported

They released an update and have fired the writer. They will now be re-reviewing the game. Such a weird situation.

Good, firing the writer is the proper course of action. Apparently this wasn't even the first time and people have found some other instances of his plagiarize. Sorry, but in any writing profession plagiarism is serious business. People in more important fields like academia get stripped of honors and titles and often get blacklisted so IGN absolutely did the right thing.

Hopefully this situation won't embolden gamergaters and alike and hopefully it won't spark another wave of abuse and harassment at innocent writers from IGN itself and many other outlets. (Some of it sadly started already and I see lots of shitty comments and huge dislikes under each IGN video and reviews).

Wow that is truly crazy. At first I was thinking ok it's a little close but by the end it's kinda nuts just how much of it is the same down to the format of the review. That's some elementary school level plagiarism right there.

@boonsong said:

The Kotaku article got updated with a second really obvious instance of plagiarism for FIFA 18. Really makes you wonder how stupid people can get.

Hey man, someone in my law school class got caught doing it. He didn't get expelled so much as fucking cashiered in front of the entire school. The entire student body got an hard copy letter (Not an email, a hard copy letter. On official embossed school letterhead) notifying them that this happened and that the person doing it was being expelled, together with side-by-side examples of what got lifted. It didn't identify the student by name, but given that the person was suddenly absent from classes, it was pretty obvious who it was. It got even worse, because he implicated others too, so the administration also mentioned (paraphrased) "Oh, and by the by, in an effort to save his hide, this person named names of others who, while not plagiarizing themselves, knew he was doing it and didn't inform the administration. That's also a serious violation of the Academic Code of Conduct and they're gonna get theirs, too."

The letter ended with a reminder that plagiarism was an example of dishonesty and/or fraud which the school was required to report to the state's Office of Lawyer Regulation and note would be placed in those student's files to follow them anywhere they went. That pretty much foreclosed them from ever getting bar admission in any state. Like I said, stupid.

I haven’t seen plagiarism this bad since fortnight…just kidding!!!

My girlfriend had a professor(and still a working officer) for her police science/criminology classes that threatened pressing charges and an arrest for plagiarism. He had done it several times before.

Maybe he had it coming, still, I take no joy in this guy losing his job.

@mattgiersoni: I doubt gamergate will care considering the offender was a man. We all know that gamergate wasn’t about ethics in games journalism.

@haneybd87: When this news just came out i saw a bunch of them on reddit using this as a 'LOOK , THE GAMES MEDIA IS GARBAGE AND THEY DO A LOT OF OTHER BAD STUFF AS WELL, JOIN US' opportunity. Whenever there's news that makes these publications look bad, there's a reason for them to promote themselves.

I was following this at work today and two thoughts have been stuck in my head due to this case: 1) How much of this guy's Youtube start added to his lack of respect of the craft and trade? My guess is a lot. 2) It's amazing how many people still consider a critic a journalist. Over in reddit threads, and even in this one, you see people referring to him as a journalist, talking about journalistic integrity and creditability etc. I would not consider this guy or anyone who does reviews for a living a journalist and doing the opposite is ridiculous. I appreciate how often I hear the GB staff say that they are not journalists. They understand the difference between what they do and what journalism is, but wide swaths of the video game community don't and the whole industry/community is worse off when those two things are conflated.

Yeah they never go "LOOK, A BUNCH OF US DOXED AND SENT DEATH THREATS TO PEOPLE WE DON'T LIKE AND DO OTHER BAD STUFF, LEAVE US"

@haneybd87: Yeah but you know what I meant, to echo the posters above, whenever something happens in this industry those shitheads start with their harassment and abuse and other horrible things routine thrown at anyone involved or speaking about the subject, if this was a woman they would be even more outraged. Just look at the kotaku article about sexism at Riot Games published yesterday and all the typical shitty comments from gamers.

Wasn't there a other famous mmorpg review where the reviewer didn't play the game?

@soulcake: There have been several instances of that over the years. The most prominent one I can think of was for some car combat MMO that came out a decade or so ago. Gamespot hired a contractor to review the game. Said contractor didn't realize that all of his progress info on his in game account was public. He slammed the game after having played only a couple hours of it. Fans found his profile and showed it to Gamespot who pulled the review and ceased contracting to that writer.

What a terrible person.

Atleast this mess introduced me to this cool game.

As a side note: Dead Cells is an amazing game regardless

What people don't know about Filip is that he is actually REALLY good at Dead Cells so it makes no god damn sense why he had to copy a review. IGN did a "IGN plays Dead Cells" with Filip, Brandon and Brian 3 of the IGN guys and they started with Filip playing and he got to the first boss without any issues but then he had problems because of his build and died to attrition, but for a first run on a new playthrough WITH nothing unlocked it was super impressive how far he got. He claimed to have 174+ runs on the switch and I believe him from the way he played. The other IGN guys were really good too in fact and taught me WAY more than I would have learned about this game from any other source. The IGN plays dead cells stream was far and away the most useful source of information I've got on the game and immediately went and picked it up and even went back and watched other videos and feel I didn't learn anywhere near as much. The video is now gone because Filip is a dumbshit but it really blows my mind since people are like he didn't play the game but he clearly did but maybe had a deadline he couldn't meet or who the F knows it doesn't matter why he did it was dumb but the man knows how to play Dead Cells.

I put several hours into the game last night and finally beat the first boss and got 2 areas past that into an area with red mist and didn't realize I was freaking dying before it was too late since I was busy jumping away from teleporting monkey men. I had 4 colorless weapons and was rank 6 in brutal 13 in tactics and 5 in survival had never done so well I had a heavy crossbow that was one shotting EVERYTHING but then I noticed my health was going down and before I could go away from it I got mega manned. The game is so damn good though and I am not a fan of difficult rogue games but this game is pretty fair as long as you have decent weapons ... really.

Sucks for the guy, but actions, they do have consequences. It isn't just this guy's reputation at stake, it's the reputations of his co-workers who have families with bills to pay as well. Even unintended plagiarism will give any site a black eye so I suspect most have rules in place that discourages editors from looking at other reviews until their own reviews are finished.

Not to throw shade at IGN, but I remember them getting called out for using borrowing Sugar Pine 7's style and comedy last year.

Firing was the right call. I hope he's able to learn from his lessons and find work soon, but there should be zero tolerance for plagiarism.

@sloppydetective: Exactly. Reviewers/critics are not journalists. What they do is not journalism.

The thing about him getting his start on YouTube is what really bugs me, though. He was, at one time, running a small YouTube channel! He got what was presumably a dream job at a major publication, and then fucking stole from a small YouTube channel?! Aside from the plagiarism itself, this reeks of an, "F you, got mine," attitude that is just disgusting.

@steveurkel: There is evidence he didn't play the game much before doing the review. In his review he clearly says "Every level has a gate that unlocks after a certain time." Anyone that played the game much knows that is obviously wrong and would not make that mistake. The "un" is very clear.

I don't fuckin get it man. Just write your own shit. Even if you don't think it's an inherently bad thing to do (which you'd be wrong about), why risk everything just so you can not think for a bit. Bafflingly stupid. Jesus Christ.

This has been fascinating to me and not at all surprising. NVC is one of the two IGN shows I watch/listen to, and since day 1 of Filip hosting that show I was like where the hell did they find this guy and why did they hire him? There’s just always been something off about him. But. If you listen to that show, he constantly mispronounces/calls people by the wrong name (devs AND coworkers), screws up info, sounds genuinely unenthused about games he says he likes, and never sounds like he’s actually played any of the games he talks about. At first I was like well maybe he’s just nervous, but still he doesn’t sound remotely qualified; after about 6 months of him still sounding that way I was like well maybe he’s just not that bright. Turns out, it was the second thing the whole time.

I know I’m firing shots here, but still. I wasn’t even a little bit surprised that this happened. I hope everyone involved ends up being ok and that Filip learns from this mistake. And mostly I hope IGN learns because they can’t afford to fuck around at this point and if I, a pretty bad judge of character, could pick up on the fact that this dude was not cut out for the job, then that probably spells out dark things for IGN

@youeightit: For real. I always wondered why they had him as the host of NVC instead of Brian Altano.