IGN Gets A Site-Wide Reddit Ban For Vote Cheating...Surprised?

This isn't really gaming related and in all honesty it's not like anyone's going to be better for it, but for anyone out there who thought that IGN was clean and serene, well today you get to learn that they are just like all those other smaller blogs out there just trying to fish for some hits. Reddit administration, moderators and IGN staff have confirmed that the News Corp subsidiary has received a site-wide ban from Reddit. Surprised?

The news actually started Sunday afternoon, but there were a lot of dubious comments about whether or not IGN was actually banned. Frank Fields, the operations manager of IGN eSports and IPL took to Twitter to bemoan the circumstance, writing a heartfelt and inquisitive post within the confines of 140 characters, saying...

Reddit has some pretty simple rules and gaming the system such as bot-spamming, vote-spamming or vote-cheating by using multiple accounts to upvote content is not allowed, making it much more difficult to monopolize content the way you can with other social media aggregators, such as the old Digg.

Regardless, it doesn't matter if Fields thinks it's crap or not because on the League of Legends subreddit a moderator lays out the details that the administration team has effectively banned all incoming links from IGN across the entirety of Reddit...

If you think this is some rare thing, think again. Big sites gaming the system to manipulate page views and garner some extra hits has been going on for quite some time and it's usually how a site stays relevant in the core circles of fandom. In fact, just last year Gamepro, G4TV and VGChartz were all caught gaming the social aggregation system as well, and effectively banned.

It's unfortunate for what positive news that could have spread through the social aggregator as everything from IGN is now banned. Indies, gaming leagues and eSport news will probably be hurt the most by the ban.

For anyone who thinks that there's no corruption circulating within the inner confines of video game media, well, this sort of stuff is a blunt reminder that situations that caused people like Jeff Gertsmann to lose his job or how some sites extort developers for good reviews is just all part of playing a game that deals with staying on top of the business of interactive entertainment.

Quite naturally, Fields and other IGN employees are denying that they were involved with any sort of vote cheating or rating-gaming, stating...

Very curious to see how this turns out. Right now Reddit is an excellent source for pilfering mega-hits since Digg turned into horse feces.

It's not unsurprising if IGN staff were trying to game the system to recover good standing with the community after first coining the phrase “entitled gamer” which didn't go over too well with a large majority of the gaming community (save for pro-corporate shills). Then there was the whole jumping to EA's defense every chance they got, which again, probably didn't sit too well with many core gamers. The general attitude from a lot of IGN's content seems to be “Promote and blow smoke first, address actual concerns of the gamer later...if ever.”

Nevertheless, there's a lot of money at stake and doing whatever you can to get an edge sometimes seems like the right proper thing to do. But how's that old saying go? Oh right, “Cheaters never prosper...unless you're Bernie Madoff, the execs at Enron, the execs at Worldcom, the pricks at Bear Stearns and all the executive douchebags who took the bailout money during the economic collapse of 2007 and 2008, and everyone working on Wallstreet.”