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IGN to scrub Filip Miucin from site almost completely after even more plagiarism surfaces (READ OP)

EkStatiC

EkStatiC

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,243
Greece
Can we at least talk (thanks for that idiot thief) about how the reviews of at least the AAA games, are always pretty similar to the point that they give the impression that the reviewers are all sitting together and work?

I don't blame anyone and i don't have that intention but i still remember the revies at launch of MGSV and BOTW to be almost the same in oll major outlets.

Long story short, this accident may be a goos opportunity to see how the reviewers operate as a whole...
 
Segafreak

Segafreak

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,756
KALOSMANI said:
No he didn't
Alot of examples he just plagerised from one source. So he even failed to follow that quote
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He stole from plenty of sources:

Axe said:
So far evidence of plagiarism has been found for the following:

I might have missed something here, but even so, very damning stuff.

EDIT: For posterity here's an archived version of Filip's infamous response to the allegations: https://archive.org/details/youtube-w_PPI9e0Nnw
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Btw, it's plagiarized, not plagerised.
 

Deleted member 18807

Guest
Stop It said:
There is no way he deserves a Mulligan now.
He should not be involved in any field of journalism and his credibility in gaming circles will never return.
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Dphex said:
you don´t know him and shouldn´t come to conclusions like that...
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Yeah, I mean.... Ugh...
What I KNOW is that people don't do shit like that for no evident reason. No way a grown-up man would be an asshole like that just for kicks.

Another theory I thought of now is that he might have had fame go to his head and, by fear of losing thi fame because of the lack of actual skills, he started fabricating stuff. OR he already plagiarize even back before IGN and that's how he got a spotlight on the first place, so he obviously chose to keep up with the same pattern.
In both of these cases, he's much more asshole than his opportunities and luck allowed then, so he deserves it. But I find very hard to believe someone would get so far without actual skills like in this case. Makes me wonder what actually makes a professional admirable.
 
Protome

Protome

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,701
ZeldaGalaxy94 said:
He copied from the same site twice?

Didn't he even try to find someone else to copy? LAZY
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Well, yeah. If he was going to put effort into it he would have just written his own stuff :P

I'm more surprised he took from these relatively well known sites. The last time I heard of something like this was Alice Bell (formerly of Videogamer, I believe now at RPS?) caught some site straight up stealing reviews from a variety of sources but they picked a lot of tiny unknown indie sites (kinda like Miucin's Dead Cells review.) They managed to get away from it for a while because
1) They weren't that big a site on their own.
2) They were stealing from a lot of tiny sites (I only heard about it because one of those sites belongs to a friend of mine, and I've written for it before.)

They probably would have kept doing it forever if they hadn't been caught and called out by a site as big as Videogamer was at the time.

But plagiarising from Polygon, Eurogamer and even less big but still notable sites like NintendoLife and NintendoWire? He's not even just lazy he's dumb.
 
Winstano

Winstano

Editor-in-chief at nextgenbase.com
Verified
Oct 28, 2017
1,834
EkStatiC said:
Can we at least talk (thanks for that idiot thief) about how the reviews of at least the AAA games, are always pretty similar to the point that they give the impression that the reviewers are all sitting together and work?

I don't blame anyone and i don't have that intention but i still remember the revies at launch of MGSV and BOTW to be almost the same in oll major outlets.

Long story short, this accident may be a goos opportunity to see how the reviewers operate as a whole...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Or... Maybe they were just... Y'know... Good games?

I love this mini-conspiracy that games reviewers all collaborate when it comes to scores etc. Trust me, nobody's pulling some strings behind the scenes to ensure a game gets a certain amount of 10's or 2's.
 

Deleted member 18807

Guest
User Warned: Derogatory Language
Punished Goku said:
I saw Filip at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn't want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.
He said, "Oh, like you're doing now?"
I was taken aback, and all I could say was "Huh?" but he kept cutting me off and going "huh? huh? huh?" and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like "Sir, you need to pay for those first." At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually "to prevent any electrical infetterence," and then turned around and winked at me. I don't even think that's a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
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You can't be serious....

Dude is really a douche then. Or maybe just slightly retarded? Or kleptomaniac - even when it comes to game reviews...?
 

Deleted member 22585

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
4,519
EU
Drezus said:
Yeah, I mean.... Ugh...
What I KNOW is that people don't do shit like that for no evident reason. No way a grown-up man would be an asshole like that just for kicks.

Another theory I thought of now is that he might have had fame go to his head and, by fear of losing thi fame because of the lack of actual skills, he started fabricating stuff. OR he already plagiarize even back before IGN and that's how he got a spotlight on the first place, so he obviously chose to keep up with the same pattern.
In both of these cases, he's much more asshole than his opportunities and luck allowed then, so he deserves it. But I find very hard to believe someone would get so far without actual skills like in this case. Makes me wonder what actually makes a professional admirable.
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I don't even think that he thought about it that much tbh. Ithink it just became a habit. He did it once for whatever reason, saw it worked, nobody noticed, he saved a lot of time. Then he simply kept doing it.
 
Silver9

Silver9

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 31, 2017
872
Dammit. You guys are making me reread posts that were already written, only by different people, and I'm getting fooled by these one-off copies! ha :P

This discussion is a serious yikes festival. It's almost bad as Yoshi's tax evasion. And my God all of this worse than what was initially discovered. Terrible.
 
Deku

Deku

Member
Oct 25, 2017
242
Toolifercle said:
I don't know it has been discussed here yet but, I have a weird feeling that he played all of us. I mean, he knew that there were lots of shitty things that he did in the past but we discovered only 2 of them, until his ridiculous apology video.

He wants more attention for a reason and now he gets it after that video.
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It's a bit too shortsighted for it to be a master plan. I guess he could have wanted to get the last bit of ad revenue before moving on, but he would have kept up the apology video if that was the case.
 
jakoo

jakoo

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,112
Anyone have a list of all of the high-profile titles Filip reviewed? It seems like it's going to be a quite a task to retroactively fill that backlog with reviews by their team.
 
Council Pop

Council Pop

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,328
Drezus said:
Yeah, I mean.... Ugh...
What I KNOW is that people don't do shit like that for no evident reason. No way a grown-up man would be an asshole like that just for kicks.

Another theory I thought of now is that he might have had fame go to his head and, by fear of losing thi fame because of the lack of actual skills, he started fabricating stuff. OR he already plagiarize even back before IGN and that's how he got a spotlight on the first place, so he obviously chose to keep up with the same pattern.
In both of these cases, he's much more asshole than his opportunities and luck allowed then, so he deserves it. But I find very hard to believe someone would get so far without actual skills like in this case. Makes me wonder what actually makes a professional admirable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah, as I said in the last thread he's a content creator, from a generation of online personalities who borrow from everywhere all the time. I am 100% sure that he never thought what he was doing was plagiarism at any point. It wasn't like he was under pressure and copied something one time- it was literally his working method. This isn't me defending him at all, I think he is just an extreme example of an online culture which has been fermenting for the past decade.

And he's a decent video editor and presenter. I mean, I'm of the opinion that IGN reviews are mediocre at best anyway, and the majority of his Nintendo editor's job would have been spent doing other stuff, so it's not like the only reason he got the job was because he ripped off other people's reviews. That was one of the reasons, obviously, but not the only one. So he clearly does have other skills. But the real issue here is he basically committed the capital crime of journalism, while working in a pretty high profile role. That's an ethical breach which you can't bounce back from, at least in the 'proper' journalistic space.
 
Jmille99

Jmille99

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
2,098
EkStatiC said:
Can we at least talk (thanks for that idiot thief) about how the reviews of at least the AAA games, are always pretty similar to the point that they give the impression that the reviewers are all sitting together and work?

I don't blame anyone and i don't have that intention but i still remember the revies at launch of MGSV and BOTW to be almost the same in oll major outlets.

Long story short, this accident may be a goos opportunity to see how the reviewers operate as a whole...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It should come as no surprise that good games get good reviews and bad games get bad reviews. We all know these people talk to each other (wasnt there a private board or whatever discovered at one point that people in the industry all used?), collaborate together, and more; and they admit as much on podcasts and such.

But some hidden secret that reviews are predetermined by a hivemind of reviewers? Thats going a bit far...
 

Deleted member 1607

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
401
Acquiescence said:
I've never really heard of this guy before, but I just scoured his Twitter page and it's a non-stop barrage of Nintendo advertisement. Literally all of it. Which would be fine under normal circumstances, but this guy was a journalist. He wrote reviews (well, I mean... he sorta did). Yet I look on Twitter and he just comes across an an enormous company shill. I know folks at IGN have their areas of expertise like Ryan with Microsoft and (back in the day) Colin and Greg with Sony, but their fandom never came off this strong.
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You would think a diehard Nintendo fan would value originality.
 

Deleted member 426

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,273
Winstano said:
Or... Maybe they were just... Y'know... Good games?

I love this mini-conspiracy that games reviewers all collaborate when it comes to scores etc. Trust me, nobody's pulling some strings behind the scenes to ensure a game gets a certain amount of 10's or 2's.
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He's not saying it's a conspiracy. I hate it when people bring in that word because literally no one would say that. It's misrepresentative and disingenuous. You can do better than that.

He's saying maybe people read others peoples reviews when they do their own. I know he said 'people sitting together' but given the context of this subject (an individual using other people's work in secret) he's clearly not suggesting that. He's just saying that's what the end result looks like.
 
Beartruck

Beartruck

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,939
*Leaves ERA for an evening, comes back to 50 page thread overnight*

Yikes. That's what he gets for poking the bear in his "apology" video. Dude will never work in writing again after this.
 
Potterson

Potterson

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,419
Jesus. And this guy tried to defend himself? Why? I would just shut up forever if I was him in that situation.
 
TooBusyLookinGud

TooBusyLookinGud

Graphics Engineer
Verified
Oct 27, 2017
7,981
California
Maybe he should find a new profession because this obviously isn't for him. His name and credibility have been destroyed and it's his own doing.

With this news, I couldn't watch or read anything this guy touches.
 
Bunkles

Bunkles

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
5,663
This is such a crazy story I feel like mainstream media could pick it up at any time. He's so fucked.
 

Deleted member 22750

Oct 28, 2017
13,267
I would be willing to bet there is a ton of this going on.

Because a ton of reviewers have to play through games really quick.
 
Last edited:
neon_dream

neon_dream

Member
Dec 18, 2017
3,644
Council Pop said:
Yeah, as I said in the last thread he's a content creator, from a generation of online personalities who borrow from everywhere all the time. I am 100% sure that he never thought what he was doing was plagiarism at any point. It wasn't like he was under pressure and copied something one time- it was literally his working method. This isn't me defending him at all, I think he is just an extreme example of an online culture which has been fermenting for the past decade.
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His twitter quote from 2014 ("if you steal from one author it's plagiarism", etc) shows he understands that plagiarism is stealing. At best he's justifying systematic action (aka "the ends justify the means") despite an implicit understanding of wrongdoing.
 
Dragoon

Dragoon

Banned
Oct 31, 2017
11,231
I read Altano's response and agree with it. People who love video games will want to talk about them, and I imagine there's probably thousands of applications from those people every year wanting to get in. It's impossible to check anyone's work and I can't blame IGN for anything like this, it's just an unfortunate circumstance. They look to be handling it as well as possible.
 
Sinder

Sinder

Banned
Jul 24, 2018
7,576
Axe said:
So far evidence of plagiarism has been found for the following:

I might have missed something here, but even so, very damning stuff.

EDIT: For posterity here's an archived version of Filip's infamous response to the allegations: https://archive.org/details/youtube-w_PPI9e0Nnw
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

How did he not get caught earlier?
 

Deleted member 4021

Oct 25, 2017
1,707
Punished Goku said:
I saw Filip at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn't want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.
He said, "Oh, like you're doing now?"
I was taken aback, and all I could say was "Huh?" but he kept cutting me off and going "huh? huh? huh?" and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like "Sir, you need to pay for those first." At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually "to prevent any electrical infetterence," and then turned around and winked at me. I don't even think that's a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
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Should have changed it to "electrical acuation."
 
The Great Khali

The Great Khali

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
3,005
Thing is him being a serial plagiarist doesn't bother me. Well actually it does alot. But at theomejt what really grinds me gears is his monetised apology video knowing full well of what you did.

It's like snatching a purse from a old woman was bad enough. But then being caught red handed then saying nah it wasnt me even though there is hard evidence, then people found out not only did you steal one purse from a woman you stole loads of lurses from many old women in the past. Sorry for the terrible analagy but I hope people get where I'm going with this.
 
The Great Khali

The Great Khali

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
3,005
I'm still shocked he still hasnt deleted his Twitter and his YouTube channel still up with the stolen content. Does he still think he can continue working on his YouTube channel? Think he doesn't want to let go of that 62,000 subs on YouTube and hoping this shit will blow over and be forgotten.
 
Bunkles

Bunkles

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
5,663
regawdless said:
While I find this story crazy entertaining, the mainstream doesn't care about videogame reviews.
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Doesn't matter if it's video game reviews, this is one of the most egregious examples of plagiarism we've seen in quite some time and with each day it keeps getting worse. A decent wordsmith in the press could easily spin this into and interesting story for the public.
 
ArtTeitlebaum

ArtTeitlebaum

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,246
Europe
Wow. His arrogant face while 'explaining' the Switch rumble by verbatim reading a GAFfers post is something very special.
What a scummy boy.
 
Squid Bunny

Squid Bunny

One Winged Slayer
Member
Jun 11, 2018
5,342
neon_dream said:
His twitter quote from 2014 ("if you steal from one author it's plagiarism", etc) shows he understands that plagiarism is stealing. At best he's justifying systematic action (aka "the ends justify the means") despite an implicit understanding of wrongdoing.
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I think he just misunderstood the quote. "If you steal from many it's research" is supposed to be about making a single work (i.e. many influences for one work). I think he understood it as "for each work, steal from someone else".
 
Print_Dog

Print_Dog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,515
This thread is definitely going in the vault, right?

Good on IGN for handling this the best way they can with the circumstances.
 
The Great Khali

The Great Khali

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
3,005
People need to get him to delete his YouTube channel. He got all his 62,000 subs using stolen content. If he is not going to reimburse people with all the money he made off on YouTube the least he can do is delete the channel and let go of the audience he made.
 
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