It has been a wild week in the world of gaming journalism. If you haven"t heard, IGN, one of the top media outlets when it comes to gaming news and reviews, was accused of plagiarism. The company took swift action after the allegation, removing its review article and video from its website. A day later, IGN would publicly apologize and would dismiss the editor involved, Filip Miucin. Now, Miucin has released his response to the incident.
Miucin starts off the video with a sigh and a slight quake in his voice, ready to explain his side of the story. He states that "there were a lot of circumstances surrounding it" but in the end, he takes "complete ownership" over what happened. He goes on to further state that what happened with the plagiarized review was "not at all intentional".
Miucin then begins issuing apologies to his former place of work, IGN, his colleagues and the developer behind Dead Cells. Oddly, he isn"t able to muster an apology to the person he allegedly plagiarized, Boomstick Gaming, and instead offers him his "best wishes" and "to keep doing what you"re doing". Somehow, I don"t think Boomstick Gaming is looking for encouragement from someone that plagiarized his channel.
Once the apologies have been laid out, Miucin goes after Kotaku editor Jason Schreier, who accused him of plagiarism on his FIFA 18 review. In an attempt to solidify his credibility, Miucin pokes the dragon by encouraging Schreier to find other examples of plagiarism in his work, and so, as you might expect, Schreier heeded the call and obliged. Like Miucin suggests, you be the judge.
In closing, Miucin says he wants to continue making videos and he wants to prove that "he can be better, better than he ever was before". Although he got into the industry for the sheer love of video games, at some point, he might have gone down a dark path. There are many faux pas you can commit in the creative space, but plagiarism surely isn"t one of them and one the offenses that are probably taken the most seriously.
Miucin says he will work hard to get back into the process of creating content but you have to wonder, what kind of path does the pariah walk to rebuild, and how long will it take for him to reach his former glory?
Update: The video has been removed by the former IGN editor from YouTube. It is unknown as of yet whether Miucin has taken it down because of the severe backlash he has faced since it went up, or for other reasons. In any case, we"ll keep you updated.
Update 2: After being removed from its original source, the video has now been restored via a Streamable post.
Source: FILIP (YouTube) via Kotaku