Niche Gamer editor-in-chief, Brandon Orselli, issued a public apology on December 18th, 2019 addressing allegations made by Gematsu’s owner, Sal Romano, that the site was plagiarizing their content.
In the post Orselli writes…
“For those unaware, we’ve recently had accusations from another website, Gematsu, of plagiarism here on Niche Gamer. While not all of the claims are true, regardless, I take full responsibility and we have already removed any legitimately suspect content from said articles, and are looking at other articles as well. This was a complete oversight on my part, mostly due to sheer overwork and lack of delegation.
“I’m not going to lie, I was really stretched thin with my time between my day job, my family, and running Niche Gamer as a second job. There have been many times I neglected my family so we could make embargo deadlines. My small team has asked me to hire more people for too long now, and by postponing that, I simply made things worse. When the accusations came out, I panicked and I lied with that ghost writer statement, and hid a few replies on Twitter. It was wrong, it was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry. This does not reflect my own moral standards, the high moral standards our staff strive for every single day, or the ethics that drive Niche Gamer forward.”
Orselli goes on to explain that between work life, home life, and running Niche Gamer, he didn’t have time to dedicate to writing wholly original material for the site, and sometimes lifted content from Gematsu.
The post ends with Orselli stating that he’s stepping away from the writing role and will delegate those duties to other staff.
The initial blow-up managed to grab the attention of YouTuber TheQuartering, who did a video outlining the entire incident.
This all started after Gematsu made multiple public Twitter threads on December 15th, 2019, outlining examples of alleged plagiarism committed by Niche Gamer.
Initially Orselli responded on December 16th, 2019 with a now deleted Twitter thread saying that it was an unethical ghost writer who stole the material from Niche, but that they terminated that person.
Gematsu also responded on December 16th, 2019 by stating that the issue of plagiarism had been ongoing since December 2015, and others pointed out that some of the articles that plagiarized the content were published under Orselli’s name.
There was also the developer of Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story who came out alleging that Niche Gamer had blacklisted them and refused to engage them.
We’re a developer who were blacklisted from coverage by NG, and the editor of NG fired and withheld payments from staff who wanted to cover it. Initially it started out as getting in touch with them was hard, but that was fair as we thought it was a small site so it could slip
— Sense – 不祥的预感 [A Cyberpunk Ghost Story] (@ProjectSenseDev) December 17, 2019
They went totally silent after this, and ghosted us for about 3-4 months. We’d never had an experience like this before, if someone couldn’t cover us they’d politely tell us and no less it was unnerving after spending our time actually working with them to make content for them
— Sense – 不祥的预感 [A Cyberpunk Ghost Story] (@ProjectSenseDev) December 17, 2019
This wasn’t addressed in the apology by Orselli, but Gematsu did make a follow-up thread responding to the apology posted on Niche Gamer.
On December 18th, 2019 Gematsu went through and did a breakdown of Niche Gamer’s apology, stating that it was “bare bones” and that it didn’t really address the issues at hand.
NG has posted an update on the whole stealing content from Gematsu thing: https://t.co/xVMamFapwf
It also deleted that ghost writer tweet after admitting it was a lie: https://t.co/lVfrlE2Kko
The tweets that follow are my response.
— Gematsu (@gematsucom) December 18, 2019
“We’ve recently had accusations from another website, Gematsu, of plagiarism here on Niche Gamer. While not all of the claims are true…”
—Except, as you already know, they’re all true.— Gematsu (@gematsucom) December 18, 2019
(cont. from above) Also what does “looking at other articles” mean when you’ve been doing the one this for years?
— Gematsu (@gematsucom) December 18, 2019
While we’re on the subject of who, it’d be nice if those two recent Granblue articles from Ryan Pearson which copy-pasted the full press releases I translated were addressed. (https://t.co/YP2vjq3b4t / https://t.co/meCHnl9g3a) There were other examples as well.
— Gematsu (@gematsucom) December 18, 2019
The thread goes on for some time, but the ending sees Sal Romano offering advice to the Niche Gamer staff.
The apology is hollow. Orselli is still involved with and making money off the site. To all the NG staffers who got caught up in your boss’ mess, I apologize. If I can provide a bit of advice, you’d probably all flourish more without your names attached to his website.
— Gematsu (@gematsucom) December 18, 2019
The funny thing about it is that all the Lefties that Niche Gamer tried to court are now throwing them clean under the bus. Virtue signaling their righteousness on social media like they’ve claimed the scalp of a fallen villain.
All the hard work they put into straddling the line and trying to play up to the fickle notions put forward by the Cancel Culture Cultists of Twitter didn’t pay off. The loud and vocal minority on the Left have no loyalty, they have no allegiance, and they’re going to continue to say that “Niche Gamer is just as bad as OAG” no matter how much Niche attempts to kowtow to the ideological demands of our current day cultural dictators.
It’s one of the reasons why trying to please them, appease them, or consider them as your market demographic is a huge mistake. Stick to covering content for the audience you know, not the one standing in the shadows with a knife at the ready — perched and poised to plunge it deep between your shoulder blades the moment you slip up and make a mistake.
(Thanks for the news tips Tomato Tentacle and Ebicentre)
(Main image copyright of Niche Gamer)
