Quick summary: A little while ago Eidos Interactive released a game called Kane and Lynch, and received mostly lukewarm reviews. One of the most negative reviews was at Gamespot, where Eidos apparently had taken out an expensive ad contract. Then a bunch of things happened in quick succession. The ads disappeared from the site. Gamespot pulled the video review (it's back up now), and the reviewer (Jeff Gerstmann, a 11-year veteran) was fired. The common belief is that he was fired because of the bad review, or the "tone" of the review, or something to that effect.
The publisher (Eidos) was "disappointed" by the score, but I really doubt this is the first time a publisher has felt that way about a review. It's no reason to fire a veteran reviewer, no matter how much money they gave you to hype their product -- especially since the 6.0/10 was only slightly below the Metacritic average. I'm not sure why Eidos would single out Gamespot for special pressure, and I'm not sure why Gamespot would react to it. Sure, executives make bad decisions all the time, but if it seems too dumb to be true...
Today the GS Staff posted this. The tone is really morbid; almost as if he died or something. I'd assume it's uncommon for a corporation to release a tribute to a guy they had unethically fired. If one of my coworkers had been dismissed for doing his job and I knew that I could be fired for same reason, I wouldn't be up for a teary-eyed tribute to him so the company could appease the masses. Really, I wouldn't be sad, I'd be pretty ticked. More importantly, I wouldn't want to hang around a place where I could be lose my job because of editorial content, but as far as we know no one has left Gamespot because of this incident.
I guess I'm trying to say that I don't really buy into the rumor anymore. Several editors left Gamespot in the past few years (on good terms). It's been stated that Gamespot was shifting gears, and becoming a more "casual" gaming site. Gerstmann had been there for over a decade; maybe he disagreed with where the company was going and was fired for that reason. Maybe that's just as sleazy, but it makes more sense to me. It would explain the reactions of his coworkers, and it would explain why they aren't leaving in droves (yet).
--j_k hits you with Wall Of Text for 999 damage
Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
Not sure if anyone else is following, but anyway:
Freelancer Frank Provo has stopped contributing to the site, as well as Alex Navarro (remember Big Rigs?).
--j_k
Posted by Omega M. (Member # 7924) on :
Oh man, those three guys wrote so many reviews for my systems (Game Boy Advance and DS). I bought many games because they said they were good and usually found myself in agreement with them about whether a game was good or bad.