Eventus International, organizers of the on-again, off-again Indian gaming conference SPiCE, on Thursday evening announced a new Gaming Awards ceremony, the “Against All Odds Gaming Awards 2020,” but in doing so have copy-pasted the Awards Process for the well-established G2E Asia Awards.
The G2E Asia Awards are jointly organized by Reed Exhibitions and Inside Asian Gaming. Its Awards Process was written in early 2018 by IAG CEO Andrew W Scott.
The act of plagiarization first came to light on Tuesday evening when Eventus International Managing Director Yudi Soetjiptadi contacted Scott by email inviting him to be one of the judges for the new Awards.
“Initially I was pleased to be contacted and I thought the concept actually had some legs,” Scott said, “But you can imagine my dismay when I opened the ‘Awards Process’ attachment, a 314-word document, and realized it was a straight word-for-word copy of what I wrote for the G2E Asia Awards more than two years ago. To add insult to injury the document had ‘DO NOT COPY’ and ‘Copyright: Eventus International Ltd’ at the bottom of it!”
The Awards Process for the G2E Asia Awards has been publicly available at http://g2easiaawards.com/index.php/awards-process since early 2018.
“I wrote back to Mr Soetjiptadi a few hours later, politely pointing out the situation,” Scott continued. “He got back to me on Wednesday, blaming an unnamed ‘previous producer’. Even if true that doesn’t absolve Eventus of responsibility. He undertook to ‘rewrite’ the Awards Process.
“The very next day [Thursday], the Awards were suddenly announced. None of the headings of the Awards Process have been changed, they still mirror what I wrote word-for-word, and while there’s been a half-hearted attempt to swap just a few of the words around in the prose, it remains a very obvious copy of my work.
“I think IAG is pretty much acknowledged as the industry leader for what we do in Asia. We get copied by other media and events companies very regularly, but never quite this flagrantly until now. To be frank, it’s an outrageous and brazen act of plagiarization.”
“We are actually media partners for Eventus International for their SPiCE event, so had been promoting this event though our media channels, but I’m sure we’ll look at re-evaluating that. It is very important to us that we associate the IAG brand with companies which conduct themselves honorably and professionally, and have respect for other industry participants.
“People say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth to be copied in this way, especially in relation to an Awards ceremony – which should celebrate innovation, originality and creativity.”
Eventus has named six judges for the awards but there is no implication any of the six judges were involved in any wrongdoing. It remains to be seen if any of the judges choose to withdraw from the event in the wake of the plagiarization revelations.
[Ed: As of 20 April 2020 (and possibly earlier), the Against All Odds Gaming Awards have been removed from the Eventus website, so the event may have been abandoned.]
