IGN's Misinformation Campaign: A New Low for Gaming Journalism

I have been actively following the industry in depth for over two years now and I have never seen a journalism website go this low for clicks. So now it needs to be addressed. This revolves around The Last Guardian, a PS3 exclusive from Team ICO (makers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus) that has been stuck in development hell for years now. So a Russian source recently reported to IGN that The Last Guardian has been cancelled. So, it is understandable why IGN would post an article about this report, it's there job after all to report on the news. However, even though the article states it's a report, their tweets have you think otherwise. Here is the tweet IGN posted earlier.


As you can see, IGN does NOT say that this is just a rumor, they say it is OFFICIAL. That means that even without an official confirmation from Sony, IGN has you believe the game is really cancelled, and thus is click bait. The tweet, at the time of this writing, has around 800 retweets. So you can imagine that confusion was created when Scott Rhode, PlayStation Software Product Development Head tweeted that him and Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida, "laughed at this news over dinner" and stated that the game is not cancelled, which Yoshida reaffirmed. You would think IGN would apologize for treating a rumor as fact, but no, they instead just update the article about Scott Rhode's tweet and change the title from "The Last Guardian is cancelled" to "The Last Guardian may have been cancelled" This, ladies and gentlemen, is a new low for gaming journalism.


Last time I checked, IGN is the #1 gaming website in the world (ironic, considering half of their articles are about movies or TV shows), and this is what they give us? Was this some sort of publicity stunt? There is NO way that they missed the fact that they neglected to put "report" in the title. And then some of the editors start tweeting out about the article, showing how "sad they are that the game has been officially canceled". IGN needed some attention heading into E3 and some money, so what better way to do that then to treat a rumor as confirmation and not apologize when the rumor is denied? IGN did not handle this professionally, so we need to take action.

I am asking for a boycott of IGN. Anyone who has their rip off IGN Prime service should cancel their subscription. Avoid IGN's E3 coverage this week and instead head to other gaming websites like Gamespot, Kotaku, and Destructoid, just to name a few. And if you are viewing IGN, make sure Adblock is turned on. I know that may sound a little harsh, but we don't click on IGN or watch their videos to be misinformed, we watch them to be INFORMED. And IGN misinformed us today, and they have not apologized for their actions. Maybe if enough people do this, maybe then IGN will get the dollar signs out of their eyes, realize what a terrible mistake they've made, and apologize to us. We need IGN to know that what they did was wrong, and make sure they and other gaming sites know gamers will not tolerate misinformation.




Please consider what I have discussed here. Comment below or tweet @8bitapeblog to discuss this with me. Stay tuned for my impressions of everything E3 related this week. And, as always, thanks for visiting 8-Bit Ape.