Editorial Fun with plagiarism at Gamer's Hell

Tags: Shadow Vault

Speaking of the below news item as well as the recently posted <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=70">interview</a> we have here. It looks like <a href="http://www.gamershell.com">GamersHell</a> has decided that rather than write interviews on their own, they've decided to cut and paste interviews from other sites and call it theirs. Check out <a href="http://www.gamershell.com/reviews_ShadowVaultInterview.shtml">this interview</a> on their site about <a href="http://www.mayhem.sk/index.php?l=1&r=2000">ShadowVault</a>. Getting deja vu?
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You should? The rat bastards over there have basically ripped questions and answers, word for word, from <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=70">my interview</a> as well as from <a href="http://www.jucaushii.ro/read_art.php?aid=210">Jucaushii's interview</a>. So, I decided to <A href="mailto:editor@gamershell.com">email the editors</a> there with this:
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<blockquote><i>Editors,
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Just what the hell is the idea with posting an interview which is a cut and paste job on your site with clips from interviews on Jucaushii.ro and my site? Your "interview" is nothing more than things taken word for word from those two interviews. Take a good, long, hard look at the one on your site, then check out these two links:
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http://www.jucaushii.ro/read_art.php?aid=210
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http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=70
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Your question about the combat in the game is verbatim what I asked in my question, which is labelled #8 for ease of reference, followed by the answer to that question as well as the answer to other questions on both the sites.
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This kind of happy horseshit doesn't fly well with me, kids. Cutting and pasting from a couple of sites and calling it your own isn't kosher.
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I await an answer.</i></blockquote>
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As Deathy put it, <i>Internet gaming journalism at it's best.</i>
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Heh. Actually, I've seen this happen in various ways on the net. This is the first time I've actually seen it done with a gaming site.

 

Well, I decided to pitch in with my own comment to them there editors of Gamer's Hell.

 

I wish RPGCodex had a lawyer. This kind of bullshit cannot be tolerated. I sincerely hope the bastard who ripped off our content gets tarred and feathered.

 

Bah . It looks like gameshell might no be guilty after all.

 

At least they tried to add their own personal touch of writing quality to the piece.

 

Well, it could be that the interviewee himself just cut and pasted some of his answers from his previous interviews, as I will point some verbatim c/p between our interview and J.ro's:

Ours:

J.Ro's

What the hell.

Gamer's Hell time:

What's up with that?

Gamer's Hell might be innocent, after all.

 

It seems to me that Mr Bencik has written a document about his game and cuts it into pieces every time he gets interviewed. Saint, please look at your question number 6. You didn't ask him anything about actions, only about skills, but the guy forgot to cut out one sentence from the beginning of his answer.

(I'm not sure which of the interviews was first, J.ro's or RPGCodex's? It was the same day...)

The aswers given by Mr Bencik in those 3 interviews are in many ways similar; in fact, partially identical. I honestly don't see Gamer's Hell fault in this. Only that they say "We've had a chance to sit down with Tomáš Benčík (...)" and after reading the three interviews, I somehow don't believe they have ever seen the guy in person.

 

Okay, refer to the questions here:

That question there is word for word the same question I asked. The repsonses can be similar, but the questions being verbatim?

The only way this could happen is either:

• Gamer's Hell cut and pasted the interviews together from RPG Codex's interview.
• Mayhem cut and pasted the intrviews together, then sent them to Gamer's Hell as a PR piece.

Either way, that's bullshit. The first one is impossible to argue why that's right, because ripping content from one site to put on yours is flat out wrong.

The second one is wrong on many levels, it means that Gamer's Hell uses pre-fabricated interviews that are nothing more than marketting gimmicks, where you let a developer write up what they want, and then you post it as an interview. It would also mean that Mayhem doesn't respect the content of the sites that actually approached them to get more information out about that title which is due for release soon.

Basically, if you do the work, which I did and the interviewer at Jucaushii also did, then you should get the credit. We took the time to come up with interesting questions, I do 13 of them each time, then you should get the credit for it. It's a fairly simple concept. My motivation in writing those questions is because I want to know the answers and I think other people want to know the answers as well. The developer's motivation is that they want to get more information out about their product.

It's all about intellectual property as I see it. If I take the time to ask for an interview, and then take the time to write up a bunch of questions, then I shouldn't expect to see that stuff posted word for word, almost in it's entirety, on another site, and certainly with no mention of where it came from.

Like I said, if the answers were similar, that's fine. There's a lot of overlap in interviews. But when you have questions that are identical, word for word, then there's not much question that came from your content.

 

Yes, I'm sorry, Saint, you're right. I concentrated on the answers. I checked once again, and yes, there is one question, number 8 in your interview, which they copied. You persuaded me that they sure need to face some serious retribution.

Unfortunately I couldn't find exact questions from J.ro in Gamer's Hell "interview". On one hand, it's easy just to mix up the words a little; on the other hand, there are some questions every normal reviewer would ask in this way or another.

 

Would you guys lynch me if I told you this game looks just about as craptacular! as restricted area!?

 

Apparently Mayhem did make that interview out of pieces of both the interviews on both this site and the Romanian one:

This didn't bother me much. It really just means that Gamer's Hell has no integrity at all, and some of their interviews are nothing but canned things the developers toss at them. Of course, it means that Mayhem canned up bits and pieces, including portions of interviews for two sites, who took the time to seek answers about a game some might be interested in, and gave them to a site that wasn't interested enough to take the time to actually work on an interview themselves - thus fucking the two interested sites! YAY!

Here's what pissed me off, though:

Oh yeah, I don't know my own words when I see them posted word-for-word elsewhere.

So, I put it as frankly as it gets to both these two:

Well, Jan Bueck hasn't screwed me yet, so he's in a better position for my time, as far as I'm concerned.

 

"You should? The rat bastards over there have basically ripped questions and answers"...

and you are saying we need a journalism etich?

You are pasting my own private emails...

and you are saying we need a journalism etich?

Just to get this answer down I had to see 4 popups...

and so on

As you may have understood by now, Thomas seems to be the one using default answers (also your forum visitors easily noticed that)

Last thing is our questions were sent 1 month ago (ask Thomas to confirm), I keep having doubts on that common question, but as your article is from 3 days ago...

I really dislike your attitude, the way you assumed everything and how you didn't even respect privacy, I hope you'll be kind enough to rephrase your frontpage. I will never get such a shit down to a lawyer, but seeing my private emails going up on a public website hurted a lot.

Sorry to all the forum 'trolls' for the time waste

 

just to have some fun.. did you notice how we have Thomas PIC on the site? Plagiarism there too? How could you not guess the article was own-made seeing we had his face? You think we were going to cut & paste your stuff and then request him a pic to accompaign the article? C'mon guys... I think it is your turn to get the attitude down.

 

I'm not the one with someone else's content on my site.

If they were private, then you shouldn't have sent them to me, thus making the emails my property to do with what I wish. Look up the legality of emails and privacy sometime.

Hey, you guys are actually spelling out the word, "you" now. Good for you.

Poor baby. Some of us don't run sites off daddy's credit card.

Couldn't think of anything else to say?

Oh yeah, while we're talking about professional ethics, nice job on releasing the Temple of Elemental Evil preview trailer. The big LEGAL GOES HERE would have tipped most people off, but you're special.

Complete with the default questions.

Mine was sent a month ago. Here's the header:

• X-cs: R
  From: Self <proverbius@rpgcodex.com>
  X-RS-ID: RPG Codex
  X-RS-Flags: 0,0,1,1,0,0,0
  X-RS-Sigset: 0
  To: info@mayhem.sk
  Subject: How's about an interview?
  Cc: deathy@rpgcodex.com, mistress <mistress@rpgcodex.com>
  MIME-Version: 1.0
  Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
  Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT
  Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2003 21:28:56 -0400
  
  Info mail reading person,
  
  Hey, I do stuff for RPG Codex(http://www.rpgcodex.com) and I was
  curious if you guys wouldn't mind doing a little Q&A about Shadow
  Vault with us? You guys had me interested at "turn based".

Either way, still one hell of a coincidence, isn't it? You know, same wording on the questions and all.

Seeing my interview cut and pasted on your site hurted a lot!

As for the lawyer, BRING. IT. ON.

No thanks!

 

Bringing up the pop ups on this site was surely totally irrelevant.

 

You'll take the last word as I'm replying and going off for a week.

> I'm not the one with someone else's content on my site.

neither am I, I sent questions 1+ month ago and had answers back 3 days ago

>If they were private, then you shouldn't have sent them to me, thus making the emails my property to do with what I wish. Look up the legality of emails and privacy sometime.

asking permission would hurt? and please look up the legality yourself.

> Hey, you guys are actually spelling out the word, "you" now. Good for you.

...

> Poor baby. Some of us don't run sites off daddy's credit card.

I'll not reply, as other guy said, it is completely off topic, my fault introducing the subject, your answer is pathetic nonetheless.

Couldn't think of anything else to say?

> Oh yeah, while we're talking about professional ethics, nice job on releasing the Temple of Elemental Evil preview trailer. The big LEGAL GOES HERE would have tipped most people off, but you're special.

> Either way, still one hell of a coincidence, isn't it? You know, same wording on the questions and all.

I have asked Thomas myself (private, it is you that seem to need public) about this... again I know when we sent questions.

> Seeing my interview cut and pasted on your site hurted a lot!

after Thomas mailing you the truh, you still keep this going?

> As for the lawyer, BRING. IT. ON.

as I said "I would never do it".

I really don't know what to do with you, you have had the author mailing you, I've brought proof and still you're not cutting the "rat bastards" on frontpage.

Again, the subject should be the game, not Thomas, not gamershell, not your ego, feel free to close eyes and keep repeating same stuff (prooved wrong) again.

 

My fault, maybe you can understand all this pissed me a bit

 

Missy is not a man!

 

Ain't that the truth!

 

I hate to point this out, but I cut and pasted the answers doesn't explain why there was a question I wrote that was the exact same question, word for word, on your site.

What's the explanation, coincidence? Time travel? What?

 

I stand corrected, Saint. Like Elwro, I was mostly paying attention to the answers. The paragraph with the eyeglass and panzer inside caught my eye the most.

 

I like how he ignores the trailer part.

 

Hello all,

My name's Dennis S. and I work for Gamer's Hell. This whole matter just came to my attention as I came back home a few hours ago, so I took my time to look up all the facts before starting to throw accusations at each other, like particularly "Saint_Proverbius" did.

According to what our main editor told me and the stuff I found out myself, we indeed send interview questions to Tomas Bencik over a month ago. The interview questions were written by OUR staff. When we got them back the 'offending' question (#8 in interview posted on this site) just "happened" to be there. We've posted the interview as is, since no one was particularly sure where the original questions were - we post two articles a day on normal basis, and until now have found no reason to check on contents of our interview questions - but there's a first time for everything I guess.

Apparently mr. Tomas while copying and pasting his responses has accidentally copy+pasted your question as well. It has been removed from our article now. As you might've noticed it was the only identical question in our interview. As for SIMILAR questions - I'm sorry to disappoint you, if you claim to have sent your interview questions same time as us (one month ago, after official announcement of the game) we simply couldn't have seen the questions your interviewer has written without hacking into his computer. If you suspect that's the case, consider shelling out some money for a firewall. As for identical answers, feel free to refer to mr Bencik himself, I believe you have his e-mail address.

Like I've already said we've removed the offending question from our interview, and I offer my personal apology on behalf of that even though it was mr. Bencik that, to tell you the truth like it should be told, fucked up. However your reaction to this event was similar to that of a bunch of prepubescent teens and really hasn't shown your magazine from the best side in this situation. Instead of amicably e-mailing us and asking 'wtf is happening' you've decided:

- to jump to conclusions
- accuse us of clipping interviews together
- post bullshit on the frontpage of your site and this thread right here
- re-post PRIVATE e-mails (the e-mails were meant for the receiver, not public vieweing the way I understand it - so now who is having problems understanding ethics?)


All of the above was an example of (how you've carefully worded it) Internet gaming journalism at it's best. Finally I loved the part about " It's professional courtesy. Treat people with that, they tend to treat you the same way. " from your e-mail. Start applying that rule to yourself, and maybe you'll get somewhere in life.

And just to comment on the last shit you told my colleague that unfortunately left on vacation and currently can't reply...

Oh, making fun of the English skills of my Italian colleague just made you hit a 10/10 on my personal 'arrogant fuck of today' rating. Congratulations dumbass, you're the grammar Nazi of the day.

No, some of us run professional gaming websites as legitimate businesses and manage to become a part of UGO network. They also manage to make it into the top 7,000 most visited sites on the Internet with a daily average of 100,000 uniques. Now what have you done, dumbass?

I didn't know we were talking to Infogrames' PR manager... And if I knew that I'd tell you the same thing we told them before – if you're dumb enough to put 'preview' trailers on public, anonymous FTPs belonging to the company, you can expect someone downloading them and posting on sites. And is it any of YOUR business once again? You leeched it off of our free bandwidth, and now you're accusing us of something? Good job once again, dumbass.



That's all, I really can't go on with this circus anymore. You have all the official responses, the offending materials have been removed, you have Tomas' e-mail so you can flame him, that's it. Even tho I might've been a bit harsh in the last three para's I wrote, it's only because I haven't been that pissed off in the last couple of weeks. For now I'm not yet ready to go down to your level and frankly I've got some PAID work to do for the site now. However feel free not to remove your idiotic bullshit from here and frontpage, and feel free to keep flaming me, Francesco and Gamer's Hell in general for whatever bullshit reason you might have now. I might check back in a bit and have a laugh. Free entertainment is always good.

 

Poof, this is fun.

Let me introduce myself, i'm the Hardware reviews director over at GamersHell.com, I was mighty surprised when i heared about this, so i figured i'd take a look.

First of all, let me say that this has been handled rather unprofessionally, if you had take the time to check things out, you'd realize we're one of the largest gaming websites online, so working the fine details would be nice.

Because we're in a status that allows us to acquire legal assurance, i'd honestly not throw the word Lawyer around, Bad-mouthing our reputation for something as speculative as you've put it in, is highly unacceptable.

Surely do not misunderstand this to be a sort of threatening or 'scaring off', thats something we hold against dearly, but you should learn to keep your hands clean from rumors and speculation...

Personally, I can assure you that no out-blunt 'ripping' happens at our publication, we spend hours over Hours working on exclusive material, to keep up with the demanding requirements to be considered a top-gaming website.

as for Ethics, pasting emails is highly immoral, we fire people for doing that, and that only shows how different we manage things, so you might want to be more professional about your work, if you expect us to even consider what you say valid.

In any case, a simple mail to us would have been more than enough, than trying to score some points on our expense.... oh well... after-all, we 'small-time' magazine just can't wait to rip a couple of unprecedented interviews from you guys...

and please,
Do mind my english