IGN has released an official statement after they and their Nintendo editor Filip Miucin were accused of plagiarism for their Dead Cells review.
IGN released the statement on Twitter, where they announced they fired editor Filip Miucin.
“We’ve reviewed the allegations against one of our writers regarding our review of Dead Cells. After taking the time to investigate, we’ve determined that there were substantial similarities between a review posted weeks earlier and our review that could not be justified and warranted taking down. Though we as a community often share feelings and even certain word choices to describe the games we love by using similar frames of understanding, this particular situation stepped over the line and is not a reflection of our editorial standards. We apologize to our readers, developer Motion Twin, and most especially the YouTuber known as Boomstick Gaming for failing to uphold those standards.
We take our review process seriously. In most cases, reviewers are expected to play a game’s single-player or story campaign to completion at least once, as well as spend additional time capturing gameplay to supply content to the video component of our reviews. Though our Dead Cells reviewer played the game and came away with glowing opinions of it — as did many of our other staff members — the review itself was simply not acceptable. We’ve parted ways with the writer involved in the review, and we will be re-reviewing Dead Cells this week. We will work tirelessly to ensure that, regardless of whether you agree with our reviews, you can have faith that every word is nothing less than the genuine opinions of our critics. Nothing is more important to us than your trust.”
IGN's Statement on the Dead Cells review investigation: pic.twitter.com/3hh0hpPK0Y
— IGN (@IGN) August 7, 2018
YouTuber Boomstick Gaming revealed the similarities between his review and IGN’s review in a YouTube video that shows the two videos side by side.
YouTuber Boomstick Gaming told us he did not want to see Miucin fired.
“Hopefully the writer will learn from his mistakes and will continue his work at IGN with greater caution and awareness, in the future.”
Do you agree with IGN’s decision to fire Filip Miucin? Did they take the right action?