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Jayenkai

Created : 12 April 2013

Edited : 07 August 2018

Feeling a Little Angry







Note to anyone coming here after the recent IGN plagiarism stuff.

I don’t consider this to be the same situation. Blatantly stealing content, then passing it off as your own work is infinitely worse than the crap listed blow.



I was irritated enough that they grabbed my trailer, gave me no links AT ALL, and only posted it to their own YouTube channel so they could get their own ad revenue from MY content.. (otherwise, why not just embed MY copy of the trailer, which was already there on YouTube..)



That was bad enough, but it's not the same as what's happened recently.



Still, welcome, and enjoy my rant!!



-=-=-



Original Post - April 2013

Something's been irritating me for the past few days.

It's been niggling away in the back of my mind.



Any publicity is good publicity, or so they say, so when someone as big as IGN decides to post your trailer, that's gotta be fucking awesome, right?

I mean.. How could it possibly NOT be awesome?!



...



Nnngh...

IGN publishes SpikeDislike2 Trailer



I should be grateful. I should love the exposure. Everything is good.



..... Nnnnnnghhh....



Issue one.

They don't have the original. If they'd've asked, I'd have happily supplied it.

I'm pretty sure it's still sat on my Mac's desktop.

.. I think.. Maybe..!



But no, they instead downloaded it from YouTube.

That's a bit shit, if you don't mind me saying so.

I'd expect better from IGN.



Issue Two.

Hang on a minute. Is that an IGN watermark on my video?

Not only do they have the audacity to blatantly steal my video from YouTube, they then shove their own watermark on it, and slap it BACK ON YOUTUBE!?

FUCKITY fucking fucknuts..



Issue Three.

Is that an ADVERT?

What in the fuck?

They took my content, slapped their own fucking watermark on it, and then got YouTube to throw in adverts, so that THEY can make money from MY CONTENT?!



Urrrrmmm... Hello!?!?

What the fuck?!?



...

Calm down, Jay.. It's exposure.

Relax.



..

It's all free publicity.



There's nothing bad going on.

IGN aren't being evil.



Look, they linked to it, and everything.



...oh...



Issue Four

The official IGN page contains no links to my App.

The YouTube description contains only a link to the IGN page.

There is no link.

There is nothing.



IGN stole my content, called it their own, slapped a watermark and adverts on it, and then didn't even so much as put my fucking name on it.

The rat fucking bastards.



Fuck you IGN!





An influx of tweets, retweets and even a Reddit post have caused a teensy wee bit of interest in the matter.

IGN have pulled their page!



The video's currently still on YouTube



For the record, it'd be nice if IGN did the right thing, and started to gave a shit about all us Indie Devs. LINKING would be a start..

Having a "Details about this game!" page is great, except when the page doesn't link to the app in question, and all the Developer/Publisher links simply wrap back to IGN's site, under the "Independent" section, thus clumping every single indie game under one giant pile of mixed apps.



Grrrrr....





Stats have been going crazy overnight. I'd like to thank everyone who's tweeted, retweeted, and more about this.

IGN really need to sort this out, and simply hiding the page isn't enough.

It's time they tried giving a crap about us indie devs, instead of ignoring everyone.

The fact that SpikeDislike2 spent a couple of days in their own iPhone top 10 should be telling them something.



I might very well be "Independent", but I'm an indie with 8 other games in the AppStore. There's no excuse for having the "developer" link simply link to a massive pile of thousands of games written by every other indie dev under the sun.

We're not all the same person, you know.

FFS, how hard is it to automate a script, to search for "all games by X author"?

Answer : it bloody well isn't.



Long story short : Give a shit, and give a link. Us Indies live or die based on links.



For those who like reddit, here's the reddit thread, which someone kindly posted last night.

Lots of to-ing and fro-ing about whether or not it was right for me to bitch about such a thing.



*shrugs*



What do you think? Lemmie know!







IGNs now removed the vid from their YouTube channel.

Only time will tell if they bother to fix the other issues, or simply continue to remove all traces of the issue so nobody can whinge about it.









Comments



smashbro35

You should have thought out this post, I mean is it really that bad? If I'm on a computer a link won't matter. If I want your app I'll check the app store, now the page is takin' down so raising hell over this backfired as you will get less exposure.



Jayenkai

"Backfire" and "less exposure" are worrying terms.

But like I said right at the start, any publicity is good publicity.



I can't yet access yesterday's sales figures, because Apple are typically slow at feeding them through, and annoyingly YouTube's "views" stat is stuck on 301 again, but here's some stats I do know.



FACT : After three days, the IGN Trailer was at 72 views. That's a bit shit for a trailer on a mega sized site like IGN.

In the past 12 hours, its gone past the stick 301 figure, and now it's had over 160 dislikes.

Everybody Dislikes It



This page has had over 14,000 views already.

14,000 is phenomenal given this site usually racks up about 300 a day.



Will that translate into sales?

Probably not. I doubt it.

I really really doubt it.

But a look at the simple visible stat of 72 trailer views vs 14,000 page views suggests that one of these things is not like the other.



And if it gets IGN off their arses, then all the better for it.



Afr0

You put AGameAWeek.com in your video at least!



Anyhow, the most interesting quote to arise from the reddit discussion came from LightTreasure:



I know this is off-topic, but I have wanted to say this for a long time:

I don't understand why video game journalism is taken so seriously. To be specific, my feelings are similar to those expressed by the quote "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

It's paradoxical. Video gaming is primarily about entertainment, but most websites dedicated to video game journalism turn it into a very serious matter, hyping expectations, creating biases, blowing up trivial matters, and in the end making the video game experience boring.

To be more specific to this post, it is obvious that IGN did this in order to earn money through video views. But it's sad to realize that IGN's version gets more attention than the developer's version. Why is IGN more popular than many video games? I know this is off-topic, but I have wanted to say this for a long time:I don't understand why video game journalism is taken so seriously. To be specific, my feelings are similar to those expressed by the quote "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."It's paradoxical. Video gaming is primarily about entertainment, but most websites dedicated to video game journalism turn it into a very serious matter, hyping expectations, creating biases, blowing up trivial matters, and in the end making the video game experience boring.To be more specific to this post, it is obvious that IGN did this in order to earn money through video views. But it's sad to realize that IGN's version gets more attention than the developer's version. Why is IGN more popular than many video games?



Videogame journalists are like... it's hard to come up with a decent metaphor, but they're like ad-executives. They have bloated egos, everyone knows they're there, but they serve no [higher] purpose.



steve_ancell

Jayenkai it's had over 160 dislikes it's had over 160 dislikes

Just a bunch of critics that don't know a good game when they see one, either that or they are pissed at the fact that they didn't think of it first.



shroom_monk

I got the impression they were disliking that video because it was IGN's copy of it and they were protesting that, rather than because of the content.



Jayenkai

Yeah, all those dislikes are for IGN, not for Spikes.

.. Well, some of them might be folk disliking spikes. Spikes are meant to be disliked, after all..



Have you seen the comments, btw? Tee-hee-hee!!!



Jayenkai

A Youtube video



The video above does many things.

First, and foremost, it advertises someone else's website before it even gets to my game.

This is MY game, showing off someone else's website.



Notice how I'm not complaining about that.



Two. It's made by that website's creator.

He could've simply grabbed my trailer from YouTube, and slapped his watermark on it, but he didn't.

He doesn't get paid for curating these games. He simply does it because he wants people to know about the games that are available. Lovely fellow.



Three. No adverts.

He could've, but he didn't.

I probably wouldn't have whinged if he had, because we've all got bills to pay.



Four.

His youtube description contains two links.

One goes to a page on his website dedicated to my game.

The other goes to my page on my website, also dedicated to my game.



If you click the link to his website, his website also contains a link to my page, because he knows what's right in the world, and knows its only good manners to include a link to the source material.

He knows that, when advertising a game, it's probably a good idea to include a link to that game, so that people can easily access it.



This isn't stuff that people need to be taught.

This is pretty basic general rules-of-the-Internet etiquette, here.



You MAY use my games to help bring in a few viewers, and you may even ask them to subscribe to your channel. The more viewers you have, the merrier.

But if you then don't follow up on that, with a single link to me on the YouTube video, anywhere, or on your site, anywhere, AT ALL, then it's pretty obvious to all involved that you aren't doing what you're doing for the love of the source material.

You're doing it for the views.

You're doing it for you, not us.



I am still angry about this.

Click Here NOW and then click on the link to download the game that the page is about, or alternatively, click on the link that brings you back to the game's author's homepage.



And this isn't just about me, either. I'm not the only Indie dev who's getting this treatment. There are loads of us having to put up with this.



Give us some credit, IGN. We deserve it.



steve_ancell

The video has now been pulled.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEWu2bIM-as&feature=youtu.be



steve_ancell

Or should I say, I can't access it coz I just deleted my browser history and therefore I'm not logged into YouTube.



Jayenkai

Indeed it has.

Rather than add a single URL to the video's description, they pulled it. Probably less hassle, or something.

Don't want to give them too much work to do, do we?



steve_ancell

Take some content from one of their channels and make some ad-revenue from that, see how the tables turn then.



Jayenkai

IndieStatik have done a lovely writeup about the whole thing, here.



Had an awful lot of exposure over the past couple of days, and am extremely grateful to all who chipped in.

Hopefully it results in something happening, over at IGN.

..



I'll be keeping an eye on them.....!

