Are we not supposed to hold game media to a high standard, or indeed the same standard I was held to in high school French? To dismiss game media would rather serve to undo a lot of the work done over recent years to really take it to task and point out the nonsense within it. The extent of copying and protection of IP law is an interesting subject (the cases deciding things for music in the US being some of the best I have read) but I can not see even the vaguest path to it being either a happy coincidence, simple truth statements or below a threshold.
I am wary of hate mobs being formed and going off without proper evidence gathering and while I think they got kind of lucky in this instance
"teaching him what he did wrong"
I don't know what the hiring requirements are for IGN, though looking at
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2018/06/04/ign-is-hiring-editors-you-could-be-one-of-them (a job listing dated less than a week ago at time of writing)
With the possible exception of Japanese, and that is an extremely slim one there, every single one of those will be extensively versed in the perils of plagiarism. This isn't then a teaching moment like maybe they screwed up an interpretation of a mechanic or something and the review suffered accordingly but a fundamental aspect of their job that would have been drilled into them for at least half a decade.
I was wondering this as well. The conclusion I went with is they might have expected it to act like one of those rage words that the mere utterance of causes some people in various groups to stop thinking rationally and just rage.