IGN editor (now former IGN editor) Filip Miucin was recently fired from IGN for plagiarizing his Dead Cells review from a small YouTube channel called Boomstick Gaming. They noticed similarities between their review for Dead Cells, and IGN’s review that Filip wrote, that couldn’t be written off as coincidence.

Boomstick Gaming’s video documents the similarities between the two reviews. It got lots of attention, including IGN’s. IGN did their own investigation and concluded that Filip did plagiarize Boomstick Gaming’s review. IGN fired Miucin. Then Filip did his own apology video on YouTube that ended up not being much of an apology. Not only that, he monetized the video. After getting a bunch of negative feedback, Filip took it down from YouTube. YongYea does a good job of breaking it down.

At first, many were willing to give Filip the benefit of the doubt that maybe this was a one-time occurrence. Then we found out that he may have plagiarized his FIFA 18 and Metroid: Samus Returns reviews as well. Obviously, his career as an objective critic of anything will be finished, but how much responsibility should IGN take for hiring him in the first place?

It needs to be asked if utilizing other “resources” that Filip spoke about is a regular practice at IGN, or at other gaming sites. In his apology video, Filip claims that he used all “resources” available to him to do the best review he could, and that his review process is no different than anyone else’s at IGN. How true is that?

IGN needs to be asked what their review process is. During IGN’s heyday – during the Nintendo 64/GameCube/Wii days – the editor would play the game and then write about it. That was it.

There’s been a long-running suspicion from gamers, and from some of IGN’s audience, that IGN is less than ethical with their reviews. Some of that is just gamers being unhappy when a game they like gets a bad score, but a lot of it is fueled by the amount of advertising from game publishers IGN has on their site. Over the last ten-plus years, IGN has become the face of corporate video game journalism and criticism. They weren’t always like that.

Former IGN editor Alanah Pearce insists that IGN editors don’t take money from publishers for good scores in reviews, and that it’s a non-existent thing. Let’s assume that’s true. However, there are ways to be unethical other than taking bribes.

For those who don’t know, or might not remember, this has happened before. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot for giving Kane & Lynch a less than favorable review. IGN needs be very transparent about their review process, as do other big websites who review games, as the internet inevitably starts combing Filip Miucin’s and other IGN editors work with a fine-tooth comb.