IGN issued a public response on August 7th, 2018 detailing the outcome of their investigation into accusations of plagiarism by former Nintendo Switch reviewer, Filip Miucin. The response indicates that IGN has fired Miucin for plagiarizing a review of Motion Twin’s Dead Cells from YouTuber Boomstick Gaming, and the organization issued an apology for his unethical behavior.
IGN’s Statement on the Dead Cells review investigation: pic.twitter.com/3hh0hpPK0Y
— IGN (@IGN) August 7, 2018
In the statement, IGN explained…
“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 under 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.”
There’s also another thread posted by the editorial manager of games at IGN, Tina Amini, who claimed that she would do everything in her power to make amends.
I will do everything in my power to ensure we make amends today, and that something like this does not happen tomorrow or ever again.
— Tina Amini (@TinaAmini) August 7, 2018
As is typical from the game journalists community, the journalists crowded around and comforted Amini for making the decision.
Almost all of the usual suspects pop up in the thread.
Nevertheless, the decision to fire Filip Miucin helps save some face for IGN given how overwhelming the evidence was that Miucin had wholesale lifted portions of his review of Dead Cells from YouTuber Boomstick Gaming.
Journalist Nick Monroe had cataloged many of Miucin’s tweets and discovered that based on past tweets, Miucin didn’t seem averse to plagiarism.
This quote from Filip Miucin tells me he knew exactly what he was doing. https://t.co/6AsYvyAo0o pic.twitter.com/SQ3JmblpDl
— Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) August 7, 2018
In this case, Miucin paid the ultimate price for the decision, losing his job at IGN.
Those who fight for better ethics in video game journalism at least came out on top… this time.
(Thanks for the news tip Blaugast and Nick Monroe)
