 Hey everyone, today we have what is hopefully the conclusion of the Philip Muson story. Philip Muson is a former Nintendo editor at IGN who plagiarized Boomstick Gaming's Dead Cells review, almost exactly word-for-word a vast majority of that review. He then proceeded to deny that he ever did it and on top of that insinuated that how he created that review is how everybody both YouTube and IGN and Kataku and everyone else creates their reviews and then he even dared Jason Schreyer from Kataku and the rest of the internet to inform him about any other instances he may have plagiarized in his past on his YouTube channel Philip basically stating that I have never done this before and turns out he has done it many times and again he did a non-apology video and took no responsibility and threw everyone else under the bus and then when he started making YouTube videos again and he references it one more time he mentioned hey I I basically learned nothing that's pretty much the summary of what happened at the beginning of his first normal YouTube video back but today actually really yesterday he put up an apology video it is just titled my apology and I figured I've already watched it so I already know what it says it's only two minutes and 12 seconds long but I figured we should watch it and I can commentate on my thoughts on it because this is at least on the surface a good apology it's eight months later than this apology should have happened and based on other things he said I don't think that you should just take this apology and think all is right in the world of Philip Musin but we will get into that in a moment let's watch this apology together all right so before we happen to the apology I think the first thing to note here is it does have an 81% like the dislike ratio which for one of my videos would be pretty bad but compared to the video from three months ago 11% 14% 22% so obviously he must have actually said something sincere or at least seemingly sincere or at least what you want to hear so let's just get into it I do love his thumbnail this it just says my apology so let's go let's click on it let's have everyone I'm not here to make any excuses or to try and justify my actions I'm only here to apologize to the people that I've wronged and to everyone that I've disappointed I'd like to start out by saying I'm sorry boomstick gaming for taking words and concepts from your dead cells review and passing them off as my own it was an incredibly selfish act and as a fellow content creator I should have known better I realized the amount of time and effort that you must have put into creating such an elaborate and well thought out review and I can only imagine how violated you must have felt when you realized what had happened alright so this is what he should have said eight months ago the moment he was busted he should have came out and said this but he didn't he denied that he did anything wrong in the first place only now after eight months I guess a reflection does he realize how violated booms that gaming must have felt now I don't feel bad for booms that gaming anymore because booms that gaming basically had everything done right for him that should have happened in the situation like this number one IGN contacted booms that gaming and paid him for that work that appeared on IGN's website so he actually did get a monetary payment from IGN for that work to his channel blew up his channel was smaller than mine when this happened and now I think he's actually at a hundred thousand or more subscribers he absolutely blew up over this situation because he not only creates really good work and really good reviews so good that IGN or at least a former IGN editor decided to steal it so good for him I'm wishing him all the success in the world he seems to be doing very well for himself maybe unexpectedly so but at that time we can't forget at the time despite all this rapid success for booms that gaming it was not a pretty situation he put up a video comparing his review and Philip Muson's basically asking his community what the heck do I do about this he didn't have a lot of money he wasn't going to be able to afford lawyers or anything like what does he do when the biggest video game website in the world steals your work like what can you do in a situation when you're not well enough off to necessarily take this into legal hands and thankfully the internet had his back in the right thing ended up happening at the end of the day Philip Muson did lose his job and did it pay booms that gaming so it just ultimately worked out but it is sad that it took something like this for people to even notice booms that gaming because he is a content creator that absolutely deserved attention without this sort of having to have someone basically be destroyed over it all right so let's let's continue with the rest of this apology he's got way more to apologize to just booms that gaming he has plagiarized from several different places I do feel like he needs to apologize to Jason Schreyer for trying to throw him under the bus even though he was in the wrong the whole time I do think he also needs to apologize to the whole of the Nintendo community for you know basically acting like all of us do it this way and I know for a fact already that he doesn't apologize to everyone that I mentioned so let's get let's get into this apology even more I'd also like to apologize to Nintendo life Nintendo wire and gadget and polygon for using their words and ideas in a few of my videos specifically Nintendo life for my FIFA 18 review Nintendo wire for my Fire Emblem Heroes preview and gadget for my Samus Returns review and polygon for my Bayonetta preview lastly I'd like to apologize to everyone at IGN for essentially dragging them under the bus with me obviously they got a lot of hate for what I did but please understand that I am the only person at fault here I'm truly sorry for any turbulence that this must have caused in your personal lives because you all deserve much better than this once again it was selfish of me to think that I could take from my peers and pass their ideas off as my own so he apologized to IGN and Nintendo life Nintendo wire a few other places that he actually has direct plagiarism from which again that's him owning up to his mistakes good for him but he didn't apologize to Kotaku or the rest of the Nintendo community or the rest of the editors out there or reviewers that he threw under the bus he is not apologizing for the excuses he made he's apologizing for the actions that led to the excuses right and I feel like that is only one part of what an apology should be he doesn't just owe an apology to people he stole content from he owes an apology to the reputation of other writers he tried to throw under the bus not through his actions as a writer and as a journalist but through his reaction to being busted and saying everybody does this he's not apologizing for that and as a content creator that was offended at the time I'm still offended that he is not addressing that very real thing that he did but whatever he's at least addressing what got us to that point and that is the fact that Philip Musen has been plagiarizing content for years and it's not okay it's just not okay and I understand the negative impact that this entire plagiarism scandal has had on on the community and that's entirely on me but I hope that at the very least it'll serve as a reminder for anyone who's looking to break into the industry not to make the same mistakes that I did I'm not expecting to be forgiven and for everything to magically get better I understand that that doesn't happen overnight and sometimes forgiveness doesn't happen at all and that's okay so while I know that I can't say anything to change what I did I hope that this can at least give these amazing creators the closure that they deserve I truly am very very sorry I will never again try to pass someone else's words or ideas off as my own I will be better I will be original thank you all right so I will give him as much credit as this if he had done this video eight months ago I think he'd be in a much better place both mentally both as a channel and it might have actually come across as being sincere the issue I'm gonna have with this entire apology is the reactions that people are having to it more so than the apology itself because this was a needed step for Philip Euston to ever be successful on YouTube again he had to own his mistakes and admit to him and promise he's gonna be better he didn't detail how he's going to be better about it how his processes are gonna change he didn't go into detailing the processes that led to him plagiarizing I really wish that he would go in more depth be open be honest and maybe that's just because that's who I am and I try to be as transparent I can with you guys about my process of content creation about how I do research and about how I sometimes get things wrong and how that happens and why it happened and why maybe it was just me rushing things and I screwed up I believe in full transparency especially when you make a massive mistake and needless to say this wasn't just a massive mistake he was a serial plagiarist which is very very immoral let alone just wrong you should not steal other people's content it can be deemed illegal and there can be legal repercussions beyond just losing a job so I honestly think that Philip Euston did what he needed to do eight months ago and then what he needed to do after that is follow it up with more explanations which we're probably not going to get honestly my issue though is just how people have reacted everyone seems pretty quick to just forgive him and that is your prerogative and I can't tell you how to personally feel about this situation what I can tell you is you're welcome to forgive him but that doesn't mean you should trust him this is someone who stole other people's work for his own benefit this is someone who made money off of other people's work for his own benefit this is someone who even after being caught red-handed denied that he ever did anything wrong this is someone who after being caught red handed challenged a respected journalist in Jason Schreyer someone who does do research at Kotaku to find other pieces of plagiarism because they don't exist and then when they were found denied that those were actual pieces of plagiarism this is someone who when he came to apologize it wasn't even an apology he didn't call it an apology he just explained his thought process and basically said everybody creates reviews this way I did nothing wrong this is someone who hasn't done anything original to get to where he is today yes not every video he's ever made has been plagiarized but a lot of the videos that help him gain notoriety a lot of the videos that gained him the most subscribers were the ones that he stole this isn't me saying that Philip is a bad person on the whole right this isn't me saying that he doesn't deserve a second third fourth fifth chance whatever chance you guys want to think that this is this doesn't mean that he is done as a YouTube content creator he's a very good video editor even if he uses pre-built transitions whatever not all of us configure how the best way to use those transitions including me so he deserves credit for being a very good video editor a very good presenter he obviously takes better care of his health than I do so he looks better on camera and he just in general has a more professional way of presenting his videos kind of professionalism usually see in channels that are much larger and that is probably helped him garner the 60,000 or so you know subscribers he is garnered but that all being said what matters more than all of that the editing the presentation the the you know patterns of speech how you what you look like on camera all the b-roll he uses what matters more than all of that which is all presentation is the content and I'm here to tell you guys right now later not I'm glad this apology exists it's better than it exists than not existing it humanizes him a little bit and it's in the best interest of him to put out this apology maybe either because he actually does regret all these things or or for the simple fact that he should be doing this to advance his own career so because of this we need to not trust Philip Muson's words because after all trusting him and trusting his words is what got him into this problem in the first place so we can't trust what he said in this apology we can't trust that he won't plagiarize again all he can do at this point is prove us wrong in the content he does make and it's going to take a long time because again he wasn't plagiarizing every video he ever made in the past so it's going to take a while but what I do want to caution everyone who just happens to like Philip and even those who hate him is you can give him a chance but please don't just blindly forgive someone for something that they haven't proven they've learned anything from yet at this point this is someone who kept making videos despite being disliked bombed despite never addressing everything and despite throwing everyone else under the bus but himself this is someone who only after a numerous amount of videos new videos he put out got bombed and he was growing and losing subscribers stopped doing it waiting for a little bit to put on an apology video this is someone who probably thinks now that this apology video is out now that it has a nice like to dislike ratio that he could just go back to making videos like he always has been and I think he should do that but I also think we all should be cautious of ever trusting him again he has a lot of trust to earn back and I don't know if he ever will earn back that trust that what he did plagiarism is one of the worst things you can do in this industry to steal other people's work and not just steal their work right like not just reupload a video but to steal their work and claim it as your own original work is one of the worst things you could do content creators don't need to be told not to do this it's common sense and I'm someone who doesn't have a lot of common sense and I even know this much so at the end of the day Phillip Musin is an excellent video editor an excellent presenter but I still have yet to see Phillip Musin the I have original content idea kind of guy that he claims he's going to be I've seen Phillip Musin the I know how to spit out and regurgitate content that other people are doing I want to see Phillip Musin the originator and again maybe it's in there maybe he has that creative bone to him I don't know what I do know is I get a little sickening seeing some people I even respect going on on Twitter and saying all these nice things about Phillip and look I don't know Phillip the person but Phillip the content creator this is step one it could be an organized step it could be fake he might not mean anything he's saying he might just go back to plagiarizing in a few years what I am telling you is it's okay if you want to give him a chance now but it's not okay for you to blindly trust everything he's doing he has been through hell and back I agree on this front but it was his own self-created hell and when you create your own hell it's hard to feel bad for you you had numerous numerous chances to make it less helpful for yourself and you just dig in your own grave so Phillip Musin mad respect to your abilities as a content creator but you didn't apologize to me and any of the other Nintendo creators for the reputation you caused harm of for ruining many of our own chances to ever break into the industry with an IGN or a Kotaku without a journalism degree you ruined that for us you didn't apologize for that you didn't apologize to Jason Stryer in this video you apologized to the things that are definitively proven that you plagiarized there are numerous other things by the way that are speculated that you plagiarized that you didn't address why because it's not definitive you have a long way still to go Phillip and I wish you luck and I hope you heed my advice that this better be sincere and you better prove it with your content moving forward because honestly nobody and I sincerely mean this nobody should trust you until you earn back that trust this is a nice first step let's see what happens next anyways this could be the last video I think I ever make on Phillip Musin unless he happens to plagiarize again and then I'll probably mention hey look see he didn't learn anything but hopefully things go well for him in terms of him just making original content obviously the apology video has led to him losing even more subscribers like a ton of them at 300 over the past two days just because too little too late that's the way a lot of people are gonna feel it's too little too late and I appreciate that the video exists it needs to exist but the reason it needs to exist isn't because he owes people an apology the reason it needs to exist is because without making a video like this he's never gonna get back to being able to make content the way he was before or everyone loved Phillip and I think he desperately wants to get back to that so we need to be extremely wary about this apology and about his promise of original content moving forward I mean so be sure to enter our Nintendo switch super smash rules ultimate giveaway through the gleam that I'll link down in the description it is absolutely free to enter and I want to thank you guys for tuning in and you guys let me know if you want me to do more discussion pieces like this where I kind of grab something happening in the Nintendo community maybe it's another Nintendo youtuber maybe it's just something a fan movement and just talk about it because I'm really interested in these topics and I talk a lot about them on live streams and people bring it up but I don't make a lot of individual videos on it so let me know what you think about it I honestly enjoyed making this video and I hope you enjoyed listening to it alright I'll catch you guys in the next video