IGN drops Dead Cells reviewer after plagiarism investigation Update: Site apologizes to Boomstick Gaming after determining now-former employee lifted the content of its YouTube review

James Batchelor UK Editor Wednesday 8th August 2018 Share this article Share

Companies in this article IGN Entertainment

IGN has removed a review from its website following accusations that it heavily plagiarises a similar video from a YouTuber.

YouTuber channel Boomstick Gaming brought the issue to light with a video comparing the two, which you can watch below.

His review for indie roguelike Dead Cells was published to the video platform last week, with IGN releasing their own review yesterday. The latter's was penned by Nintendo editor Filip Miucin, and released in both video and written form.

Boomstick Gaming's video shows the remarkable similarities between a lot of the editorial, and even the structure of the review. In the show notes, he has transcribed excerpts from both reviews, which show just a few changes have been made to words and sentence structure.

IGN has since removed both versions of its own Dead Cells review, and replaced the written version with the following statement:

"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."

You can watch Boomstick Gaming's comparisons here.

Update: IGN has issued an official statement on the issue, and has fired the responsible writer. The statement can be seen in full below: