An article concocted to attack one of our writers and our publication as a whole several years ago continues to make the rounds, most recently in a video that’s garnered more than 500,000 views on YouTube in the last two days.

This is a fake article.

To make it clear to those not able to figure this out on their own: Kotaku has never published an article headlined: “Should Killing Female Gamers In Online Games Be Considered Rape?” Our writer, Patricia Hernandez, never wrote such a thing. It was fabricated to undermine her.

This fake article is as fake now as it has always been. It is a mean-spirited hoax, perpetuated by people who either don’t care that it is fake or can’t be bothered to check. If you have ever believed it was real, you have been duped.