UPDATE: Is Imitation the Sincerest Form of Flattery?

They say the sincerest form of flattery is imitation. That may be so; but when you’re running neck-and-neck with someone who is, for all intents and purposes, a competitor, and they imitate one of your key features, it’s a bit upsetting. One of our competitors, and the product of an old-time friend of ours (John Clabo), GamerNode, has recently announced that they have begun aggregating their news from various gaming publications throughout the internet. This announcement comes on the heels of a widespread concern from within the GamerNode community that the site was in its last days after not having regularly updated in quite some time (although, to be fair, we thought that was far from true).

That aside, the announcement of this feature of theirs sounds all too familiar. Oh yeah, that’s because it’s a feature we’ve had for two years and initially unveiled when we were still known as Amped News. At the time, John Clabo – who I’d like to point out is someone we respect and have gladly competed with for years – thought it was a good idea, but admitted it wasn’t something he’d ever utilize or really thought was worth adopting because he thought it drew attention away from the site’s own content. Although we received mixed reactions when we first unveiled the feeds, we received positive feedback overall.

Fast forward two years, and a feature he [John Clabo] initially didn’t find to be all that exciting, is the “latest and greatest” feature that he has to offer.

Let’s be real, we all keep an eye on one another in this game. And I very highly doubt that he was sitting on the toilet one day, and the thought popped into his head: “You know what’s a good idea? If we aggregated all the gaming news onto one table on the site.” It’s pretty damn clear that this idea was lifted almost directly off of our site, and to be straight up, that shit’s not cool.

We didn’t want to throw ourselves into the shit-hole that is videogame news reporting like GamerNode and all of our other direct competitors, because it’s exhausting, and in an industry such as ours, it’s unnecessary (especially at our size). It seems it took them two years, and 18 straight days of no news updates, to realize that. It’s fine that it took them so long to make a change, but the decision for that change to be such a blatant rip-off is more a slap to the face than a flattering gesture.

You see, in this business, every little bit that you have to differentiate yourself is precious. And the fact that we had more foresight than most of our competitors is something we pride ourselves on. Don’t get me wrong, we have a lot more up our sleeves, but this still comes as a shock.

I’m not saying we’re going to war, because by simply continuing to produce the best content that we can will take care of that. But, nothing gets the blood pumping like a little rivalry. Buckle the f**k up. Shit just got real. (HINT: Laugh, it’s not really all that serious.)

UPDATE: John Clabo contacted Anthony by email and said the idea came from an editor of the site named Eddie. The idea originated a couple of weeks ago and John stated that he has been away from the business for some time. We do believe John at least still has some kind of opinion in the operations of GamerNode, and considering our personal conversations about this feature many times, we’re wary of how fully independent Eddie’s decision was. But that’s what John said, so in fairness we thought we should relay that for the full story.

UPDATE #2: More anonymous sources within GamerNode say John Clabo had no say in this decision and did not conceive of their news feeds solution.

Related posts:

1. UPDATE: New Final Fantasy XIII Screens & Videos Surface, Agito and Versus XIII as Well