Filip Miucin's IGN Plagiarism Controversy

Overview

Filip Miucin's IGN Plagiarism Controversy refers to the online backlash caused by allegations that video game critic Filip Miucin plagiarized other gaming critics and sources in his reviews created as Nintendo editor for the gaming website IGN. IGN terminated Miucin after the discovery he had likely plagiarized his review of Dead Cells from a lesser-known YouTuber. Miucin apologized and intimated he had never done that sort of thing before in a video response to the controversy. This led others to track down several other examples of Miucin's alleged plagiarism, which in turn led IGN to remove most of Miucin's work from the site.

Background

On July 24th, 2018, YouTube reviewer Boomstick Gaming posted a review of Dead Cells praising the game (shown below, left). Two weeks later, he posted a video noting how IGN's review of the game appeared to plagiarize his review in structure and almost completely in word choice (shown below, right).

In the description of the IGN comparison video, Boomstick Gaming provided text examples of how IGN's Nintendo editor Flip Miucin copied his review (examples shown below).

02:30 MYSELF: Dead Cells only falters slightly with some repetition setting in, especially on the early areas and during longer play sessions. The enemy designs here are interesting and fun to fight but in the first level alone you will probably have killed the same enemy about 50 times already and that same enemy will be used throughout various levels.
02:30 FILIP: Dead Cells does falter slightly with some repetition but its only felt in its earlier areas and during extended play sessions. While early level enemies are a good introduction and make for fun and interesting fights early on, you can only kill so many zombies before it starts feeling a little stale.

03:07 MYSELF: Dead Cells figures out and intriguing way to have your rogue lite and metroidvania experience all in one by focusing on your failures and urging you to try something new the next time.
03:07 FILIP: Dead Cells strikes a perfect and engaging balance between the metroidvania and rogue lite experiences by focusing on your failures and urging you to experiment when you do fail.

Developments

After the video was posted online, IGN pulled both their video and written reviews of the game and replaced the written review with a statement^[1] reading:

"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."

On August 7th, IGN announced that they had "parted ways" with Miucin, stating the amount of similarities between his review and Boomstick Gaming's was unacceptable. Meanwhile, a post titled "IGN may have been caught plagiarizing" was submitted to /r/KotakuInAction,^[13] where it received upwards of 880 points (97% upvoted) and 140 comments within 10 days. In the coming days, The Verge,[32 Game Revolution^[2], Forbes^[3] and other news sites covered the controversy.

The same day, Kotaku^[4] received a tip that Miucin had appeared to plagiarize another critic for Nintendo Life when he reviewed Fifa 18 (example shown below).

Nintendo Life: However, because it’s not running on the Frostbite engine, FIFA 18 on Switch doesn’t play exactly like the other current-gen versions. The pace is slightly faster and player animations and physics aren’t quite as fluid, lending the game an ever-so-slightly more arcade feel (but not to any major degree).

Miucin: Only this time, it’s running on a custom engine that EA designed specifically for Switch, which means that it doesn’t play exactly like the Xbox One and PS4 editions of the game do. The animations and physics are definitely not as fluid and the pacing feels slightly faster, ultimately leaving the game feeling a little less realistic and slightly more arcadey.

Three days after Miucin was fired, he posted a video stating the Dead Cells plagiarism was "not at all intentional." He also encouraged Kotaku to "keep looking" after he disagreed with their publication of the supposed Fifa 18 plagiarism claim. He claimed Kotaku was trying to "get clicks" off his name. The video has since been deleted but mirrors continue to be posted to YouTube.

The challenge to Kotaku to "keep looking" for examples of his plagiarism led to the discovery of many more articles which he appeared to plagiarize.^[8] Nintendo Wire posted a video demonstrating how Miucin had copied their Fire Emblem preview almost word for word (shown below), a Bayonetta review that took from Polygon,^[5] a video about the Nintendo Switch HD Rumble that took from a NeoGAF thread,^[6] and an article on Octopath Traveler that took from one of his IGN colleagues, Seth May.^[7]

The myriad discoveries led IGN editor Justin Davis to announce that they would remove all of Micuin's content from their site.

GamerGate Comparisons

On August 12th, 2018, Twitter user @carolynmichelle^[14] posted a sarcastic tweet about the response to the plagiarism accusations from the GamerGater movement, suggesting that the controversy was not getting enough attention from those who claim to care about "ethics in gaming journalism" (shown below, left). Within five days, the tweet gained more than 100 retweets and 480 likes. On August 14th, Twitter user @DominicTarason^[15] tweeted a rumor that Miucin was being courted by the alt-right, referring to the group as the "Ethics in Game Journalism crowd" (shown below, right).

Despite the criticisms, several threads about the incident were submitted to /r/KotakuInAction,^{[9][10][11][12]} many of which reached the front page of the GamerGate-themed subreddit. On August 17th, the gaming news blog One Angry Gamer^[16] published an article titled "Gaming Journalists Complain #GamerGate Isn't Angry Enough About Filip Miucin," which highlighted various reactions from GamerGate opponents and supporters about the incident.

Search Interest

External References