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Despite the fact that every major game message board is crowded with would-be reviewers writing their own reviews, people still steal GameSpot's. Why?

Normally I'd use this column to try to make some kind of insightful comment about the game industry, but the stealing is just getting out of hand. In my years here at GameSpot, I've seen people steal GameSpot's articles, screenshots, and other copyrighted assets here and there, but ever since this year's E3, it's been ridiculous. We've seen people copy-paste our written reports, lift our watermarked screenshots, and even try to steal our recently unveiled GameSpot Ice design. That's right, some party stole the exact design (right down to the individual buttons and graphics) and put it on their Web page, completely unchanged, and thought that no one would actually notice the similarity. I don't know what they were thinking, and I'm not sure they did either.

The results of a Google search for "video games." We know we're not alone here.

What kills me is that a lot of the places that steal from us are clearly trying to compete with us. Several of the culprits are small enthusiast sites run by devoted fans who attempt to cover the same topics GameSpot does. Don't be shy. It's competition--you know it, and we know it. But how do you expect to be on the same level as a competitor if you constantly resort to stealing from them? In doing so, you compromise whatever reputation you may have been building for yourself. Instead of being an up-and-coming group of enthusiasts who cover games as well as the pros (you're welcome to snicker at this, but I do like to think that's us), you're making yourselves out to being a bunch of amateurish kids who have to resort to stealing from someone else in order to have anything worthwhile. In effect, you're ensuring that you'll never leave the bush leagues. We here at GameSpot like to think that we've come a long way since we first launched over six years ago, but we didn't get to be where we are today by stealing from our competitors. For instance, GameSpot's July 4th video montage wasn't stolen from anyone--it was painstakingly crafted by GameSpot Live producer Tyler Winegarner. Six years ago, streaming video was a pipe dream and GameSpot Live was just a glimmer in the eye of executive producer Ryan Mac Donald. It took a lot of hard work and more than a few risks for the GameSpot Live group to become what it is today, and to be able to produce really cool video features like these. If we've had success here at GameSpot, we've achieved it by constantly working harder and doing more. To us, that's more important than ever, and if you'd like to succeed in this business, it should be just as important to you.

There seems to be some widespread misconception about GameSpot--that we're a bunch of cigar-smoking fat cats who swim around in piles of money, so stealing from us is a victimless crime that hurts no one and simply shares our criminally excessive wealth with the poor, underprivileged folk who are without the means to get a GameSpot Complete subscription, but can mysteriously still afford to buy new PS2, Xbox, and GameCube games at $40 a pop. Nothing could be further from the truth. And if you're stealing from us while trying to run a fan site of your own, the people you're hurting the most are yourselves.