UPDATE: IGN have announced that they have parted ways with Filip Miucin after an investigation into the review, and also that they are looking into compensating the YouTuber:
IGN's Statement on the Dead Cells review investigation: pic.twitter.com/3hh0hpPK0Y
— IGN (@IGN) August 7, 2018
Yes, we have talked about other steps behind the scenes. Our editorial manager reached out with a proposal along those lines.
— Peer Schneider (@PeerIGN) August 8, 2018
ORIGINAL STORY:
Apparently even the biggest websites are guilty of cutting corners. Following condemning evidence, IGN have removed their recent Dead Cells review on plagiarism grounds after it was discovered that it had borrowed heavily from a YouTuber by the name of Boomstick Gaming.
With the press embargo for Dead Cells reviews lifting yesterday, review scores came pouring in with plenty of effusive praise for Motion Twin’s “RogueVania”. One of the biggest scores came from IGN’s Filip Muicin, who is the “Nintendo Editor” at the publication, with a 9.7 for the Nintendo Switch version.
To accompany the written review, IGN also released a video review that quickly summed up Filip’s thoughts. However, when Boomstick Gaming came across the review, it was pretty clear to him that they were actually his thoughts, just slightly retooled.
Here’s the comparison video below:
It’s very much the same review, just tweaked slightly. A damning point for IGN arrives at 3:07 for both videos in which the voiceover is almost inseparable. They both run for similar lengths and also share many of the same points.
With the plagiarism being discovered, IGN removed both the written and video versions of the review and issued the following statement:
“Editor’s Note: As a group of writers and creators who value our own work and that of others in our field, the editorial staff of IGN takes plagiarism very seriously. In light of concerns that have been raised about our Dead Cells review, we’ve removed it for the time being and are investigating.”
At this time of writing, the review is still a part of the game’s official score on Metacritic but is not featured on Opencritic. The review has also been removed from N4G. Miucin is yet to comment on the situation.
Dead Cells is out today on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
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