VG247: “Rumour – Disney Epic Mickey 2 going co-op, multi-platform”, January 3rd, 2012
According to the preserved text, presented in full below, the sequel to the 2010 Wii exclusive is due in northern autumn, will release on PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360, and feature split screen co-op play. The second player will take control of classic Disney character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
VG247: “Marketing survey suggests Disney’s assessing interest in Epic Mickey 2”, August 27th, 2011
Possible gameplay details listed included optional split-screen co-op with Mickey and Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, and the formats listed for the game were Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.
CVG: “Epic Mickey 2 going multi-platform with co-op?”, January 3rd, 2012
According to the newsletter Epic Mickey 2 will be “available for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii” and a second player can get in on the action, with the painting ability given to one player and the thinning ability to the other.
CVG: “Disney survey reveals Epic Mickey 2 - report”, August 28th, 2011
According to the report, the game will have a two-player split-screen option with Mickey and his brother Oswald The Lucky Rabbit playable, while Mickey’s paint and thinner powers make a return.
It’s being lined up for release on Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3, claims the source, making no mention of 3DS, Vita or Wii U.
There are a handful of different ways CVG and VG247 could have approached wording this story (just Google it, and see what other sites did last week), and of course they chose the one which makes them continue to look uninformed/oblivious/lazy/incompetent at their jobs.
In the case of VG247 — not linking to, including tags, or acknowledging that they covered the topic half a year ago, and that it featured nearly identical information.
For CVG — wording their headline as an unnecessary question, when the answer is not only present in the source material and thus in the very article itself, but also, again, in their prior coverage from last August.
Sigh. Happy 2012. Off to a great start.
Oh, lord.
That does look a lot like Ellen Page in The Last of Us. Safe to assume she’ll be voicing the female character? No.
It was speculated by Naughty Dog fans following the game’s unveil at the VGAs over the weekend that the Inception and Juno actress would be involved.
—VG247, Johnny Cullen: Ellen Page not involved with The Last of Us, Enslaved design lead on board [Dec 12th, 2011]
I don’t think anybody who suggested that Ellen Page was in The Last of Us - myself included - was making the suggestion seriously, but thanks for the tip, JoCul.
![VG247, Brenna Hillier: Deadmaus5 misplaces pre-release Vita unit [Dec 11th, 2011]
This went up today, some time after Deadmau5 revealed that his Facebook post was purely to troll Sony management. Still, rather than issue a correction, VG247 opted to delete the entire post, so there’s no link.
Fortunately the post is preserved in the site’s RSS feed, so here’s a screengrab of that.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw2lu26W0o1qaim7mo1_500.png)
VG247, Brenna Hillier: Deadmaus5 misplaces pre-release Vita unit [Dec 11th, 2011]
This went up today, some time after Deadmau5 revealed that his Facebook post was purely to troll Sony management. Still, rather than issue a correction, VG247 opted to delete the entire post, so there’s no link.
Fortunately the post is preserved in the site’s RSS feed, so here’s a screengrab of that.
Cropped and rotated! Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
VG247: “Keighley: Alan Wake XBLA is “effectively” Alan Wake 2”, December 5th, 2011
Ignoring the non-newsworthy hyperbole from Spike TV’s glorified gaming hype man, this kind of lazy ineptitude shouldn’t be happening still, on a professional site:
The digital title, rumoured to be subtitled Bright Falls, will debut at the Spike-hosted awards this weekend.
The hyperlink above — whose URL and associated headline is visible by simply hovering over it — links back to a previous news article which clearly shows the (rumored) menu of the AW sequel, and its name. Assuming it was real.
VG247: “Rumour: Alan Wake: Night Springs front menu shown”, November 4th, 2011
It’s not Alan Wake: Bright Falls, as stated. It’s Alan Wake: Night Springs (or Alan Wake’s Night Springs). It says that right in the goddamn title, which was also coincidentally written by JoCul, just a month ago.
I mean… I’m just sayin’. Journalism.
I would suggest that someone at VG247 hop in a car (or aboard a plane, or whatever) and head over to Johnny Cullen’s house so they can give him a swift kick in the Pulitzers, but they’re probably too busy writing their own shoddily-written, poorly-researched pieces.
Also, “The VGAs happen this Saturday”? If Cullen got higher than a C in his English GCSE exam I will be incredibly surprised.
Kotaku: “Gamers Pepper Sprayed During Black Friday “Competitive Shopping”, November 25th, 2011
DToid: ‘Black Friday shoppers Pepper sprayed Walmart game section”, November 25th, 2011
VG247: “Gamer pepper-sprayed in Black Friday sale”, November 25th, 2011
Take the lucky coincidence that the person(s) involved in this incident play/are aware of/wanted to buy discounted videogame merchandise out of the equation, and would this be “news” worthy of covering on a gaming site?
The answer is, shockingly, no. Not at all. It’s not even really news whatsoever.
Would a few unruly mainstream shoppers at an isolated store who happen to be slobbering over the chance to pick up some overly promoted discounted Blu-rays or DVDs, and then getting into a minor shopping altercation in that medium’s accompanying section, be all over the web’s various film and TV/entertainment sites?
Probably not. It’s not a pressing matter of any widespread significance, even with the faux CONTROVERSY ZOMG HEADLINES! In fact, I’m quite surprised the L.A. Times made as big of a deal out this as they did. It’s not even under their Entertainment tab; it’s just ‘Local Breaking News’.
This kind of shit is not surprising in the slightest, and happens every year — and not exclusively pertaining to videogames. Retailers should honestly be ashamed of themselves for promoting, and by association, encouraging this ongoing clusterfuck of nonsense.
I long for the ending of the practice of sites — be they gaming or not — tripping over themselves on a slow day to pick out any pseudo-relevant bit of info, from an otherwise unrelated topic, to concoct an unneeded article.
Take the weekend off and eat your goddamn leftovers. Christ. Those ad clicks will be back on Monday.
Plunkett, Sterling and Cullen - the three most common offenders of “posting vaguely gaming-related not-news bullshit as if it were relevant gaming news”. Nicely done, boys.
Turns out I don’t have to do a write-up about the Metal Gear Solid 5 fiasco. semprafi rather nicely covers it here:
Destructoid: “Metal Gear Solid 5 is NOT confirmed … yet”, November 21st, 2011
Kotaku: “Is Metal Gear Solid 5 Coming? “Probably…At Some Point”, November 21st, 2011
GameInformer: “Metal Gear Solid 5 Confirmed [Update]”, November 21st, 2011
Giant Bomb: “Turns Out Metal Gear Solid 5 Talk Was a False Alarm”, November 21st, 2011
NowGamer: “Kojima: Wants No Involvement In Metal Gear Solid 5”, November 21st, 2011
VG247: “Kojima: “We’ll probably have to make” Metal Gear Solid 5”, November 21st, 2011
CVG: “We’ll probably have to make Metal Gear Solid 5,’ admits Kojima”, November 21st, 2011
IGN: “MGS5: “We’ll Have To Make It,” Says Hideo Kojima”, November 21st, 2011
Shacknews: “Kojima has ‘no idea’ what MGS5 will be”, November 21st, 2011
Joystiq: “Kojima on MGS5: ‘We’ll probably have to make it at some point”, November 21st, 2011
Just a sampling of the sites covering this and/or backpedaling on their
acts of journalismerroneous assumptions (something that’s an increasingly big problem), as a result of Official PlayStation Magazine UK deciding to “address” their conjecture-filled, incredibly misleading-so-it-would-spread-like-wildfire cover article tease earlier this month:When asked about the sequel to MGS 4 the series’ creator replied “I think we’ll probably have to make it at some point, but what that will be, we have no idea”. Once again, though, Kojima is downplaying his involvement. “As far as my involvement in the project is concerned, [it] probably won’t be as much as it was with MGS1 – maybe I can do just one stage! For MGS1 I made the maps myself, laid out the enemy routes myself, did everything hands-on – that level I can’t do again.”
Now, compare to these same outlets’ original take on the now confirmed non-story.
Destructoid: “Kojima cover story in OPM confirms Metal Gear Solid 5”, November 17th, 2011
Kotaku: “Snake? Snaaaake?!: Is Hideo Kojima Helming Metal Gear Solid 5?”, November 17th, 2011
GameInformer: “Metal Gear Solid 5 Confirmed”, November 17th, 2011
GiantBomb: “Metal Gear Solid 5 Is Apparently Happening”, November 17th, 2011
NowGamer: “Kojima Confirms Plans For Metal Gear Solid 5”, November 18th, 2011
VG247: “Hideo Kojima to discuss plans for MGS5, Project Ogre in next issue of OPM”, November 17th, 2011
CVG: “Kojima talks MGS 5, Rising in new OPM”, November 17th, 2011
IGN: “Kojima ready to talk Metal Gear Solid 5”, November 18th, 2011
Shacknews: “Hideo Kojima to discuss plans for MGS5, Project Ogre in next issue of OPM”, November 17th, 2011
Joystiq: “Tactical Espionage Announcement: Kojima working on Metal Gear Solid 5”, November 17th, 2011
You seriously have NO idea how hard I am laughing at this. Sure, a large part of the blame can and should be placed on OPM UK’s doorstep for how this played out, as print gaming magazines — especially European ones, and especially those under Future Publishing — are mostly reliant upon speculatory/conjecture laden/hypothetical/sensationalist features to sell their out-of-date wares to the public anymore, who are vastly ahead of them thanks to the web.
But you’d think after the countless, borderline embarrassing examples in recent memory, enthusiast press would have figured that out by now.
At least the folks at Giant Bomb have seemingly acknowledged this, and vow to “refrain from publishing anything from OPM UK again anytime soon,” so as to not “encourage what was purely link bait.”
Too bad that’s not an industry-wide accepted practice.
Rimmer: After intensive investigation, comma, of the markings on the alien pod, comma, it has become clear, comma, to me, comma, that we are dealing, comma, with a species of awesome intellect, colon.
Holly: Good. Perhaps they might be able to give you a hand with your punctuation.
Rimmer: Shut up.
Kotaku: “Wait, There’s a Halo Movie Planned for 2012?”, October 6th, 2011
CVG: “Spielberg to direct Halo movie, claims report”, October 6th, 2011
Eurogamer: “Spielberg-backed Halo movie for 2012?”, October 6th, 2011
VG247: “Report – Halo movie planned for 2012, Spielberg involved”, October 6th, 2011
As professional games journalists, if you can seriously entertain the dubious idea that a Hollywood-level Halo movie, helmed by Steven Spielberg, could be cast, put through pre-production, production and post-production, and released within the next year — and by association, kept a secret all this time — I can’t take you or your site seriously ever again.
And it’s hard enough to take most of these sites seriously as it is.
Having said that, I’ll gladly eat crow should this supposed collaborative miracle actually wind up happening, as some seemingly misinformed foreign marketing materials suggest.
Less than a year of production time for a scifi epic? Nope. Never happening.
VG247: “Quick Quotes: THQ CFO on recent studio closures”, September 11th, 2011
VG247: “Axed THQ studios were ‘not consistent with’ publisher’s strategy”, September 9th, 2011
Of all of VG247’s countless shitty operating practices, “ignoring co-worker articles” and/or “ignoring already posted content” really is right at the top of the list.
Also, yet another instance where the ‘quick bite’ thing more sites are starting continues to be a problem.
If these people aren’t capable of checking what’s on their own damned website how can we trust them to bring us reliable news?
A List of Recently Stolen Content on The Hip Hop Gamer Show Website
I’ve since spoken to Hip-Hop Gamer about this subject. Click here for more details.
I’ve gone through the content posted on HipHopGamerShow.com over the last two weeks (basically anything posted to their site from August 25th to today). Here’s a list of every article I’ve seen that appears to have been stolen from another source.
This list doesn’t include non-gaming related articles like this one, nor does it include instances where a press release has simply been copy-pasted into an article (although obviously that’s a bit shit as well). However it does include gaming-related items lifted from non-gaming news sources like ABC News 10.
- Sledgehammer boss wants to develop Modern Warfare 4 [Original source: Gamerzines]
- DICE: We reuse Memory on PS3; HUD Rendered last [Original source: GamingBolt]
- Borderlands 2 Interview with Jeramy Cooke [Original source: N4G]
- Batman: Arkham City’s New Game + Delivers Tougher Bosses, Thugs + More [Original source: ArkhamCity.co.uk1]
- Modern Warfare 3 Interview With Mark Rubin & Jason Ades [Original source: Cheat Code Central]
- Modder creates Xbox 360/PS3 combo console [Original source: SideQuesting2]
- “No, BF3 doesn’t have a shot of outselling MW3.” – Michael Pachter Interview [Original source: Gamezone]
- Massive Video Game Sales at Amazon [Original source: Gamer Gaia]
- Cliffy B Claims Gears 3 DLC Will Be ‘More Than Just Multi-PlayerMaps’ [Original source: Botchweed3]
- It Sounds Like the Next Duke Nukem Game will be Better and will be Revealed ‘Soon’ [Original source: “kotkau”4]
- John Madden on ‘Madden NFL 12′ and the upcoming NFL season [Original source: ABC News 10]
- DICE: Don’t worry about Battlefield 3 on console [Original source: VG2473]
- Halo 4 Warthog makes appearance in Forza 4 [Original source: The NPCs]
- More on Spotting, Music in Multiplayer and BF3 Soundtracks – DICE Talks Sound Design [Original source: MP1st.com]
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim DLC will be timed exclusive for Xbox 360 [Original source: Examiner]
- Valve: MS needs to be “comfortable” in opening up Xbox Live [Original source: VG247]
- Capcom Reveals Massive Changes Coming To SSFIV: AE [Original source: The Sixth Axis]
1 This one’s a bit different in that the Hip Hop Gamer linked the original ArkhamCity.co.uk post as “SOURCE”, not his usual “shoutout to…”, however the actual “quoted” text has still been posted inline with no indication that it was written by anyone other than HHG.
2 Hip Hop Gamer cites the creator of the combo console as “The Original Source”, but gives his customary “shoutout” to SideQuesting, whom he lifted the body text from.
3 ”Shoutout” links to the original source’s front page, not to the original article. I’ve linked to the article for ease of comparison.
4 HHG misspells “Kotaku” and attempts to link to their front page, however the link is broken and takes you to HipHopGamerShow.com’s “Page Not Found” error. Also of note: Kotaku’s content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which means their articles can be disseminated provided the source is properly attributed. However, whether or not a “shoutout” consisting of a broken URL and a misspelt site name counts as proper attribution is perhaps worth discussing.
Remember, the Hip Hop Gamer has Google Ads on his page. If your work has been stolen then he’s making money off of your work. You may want to consider filing a DMCA Complaint with Google Ads.
