Last week, on May 20, 2020, we were alerted to claims that an article we published back in 2016, titled 'Why do League of Legends players hate Teemo?', contained similarities to the YouTube video 'Why League Players HATE Teemo' by Gbay99.
As content creators, we take claims of plagiarism seriously, and immediately removed the post while we investigated. After looking into the claims, PC Gamer's editorial team determined that the similarities went beyond coincidence. Our investigation noted both linguistic similarities and the re-use of specific in-game examples. We have now removed the article permanently from our site.
The article was written by a freelance writer, and we published it in good faith. As part of the commissioning process, all of our freelancers agree that submitted work is original. That wasn't the case here, and as such we will no longer be working with that writer. We have also made the decision to remove all of their work from our site.
After concluding our investigation, we reached out to Gbay99 to explain the situation. As a goodwill gesture, we have paid him the price of the original commission.
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