gamespot's editorial director fired

Jeff Gerstmann, a fellow games journalist and chief editor at GameSpot was abruptly fired a couple of days ago. Gerstmann has been working at GameSpot for more than 10 years and was the Editorial Director for GameSpot before his termination.

The rumours that have been surrounding Jeff's sudden and unexpected departure revolve around a recent review of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. Eidos had been investing heavily in advertising on GameSpot including skins for the site and a trailer making function. Now Jeff gave Kane and Lynch a 6.0 score and a negative review (so says Eidos, the game's publisher). Eidos' retracts all future advertising with GameSpot, only to change their minds a while later. CNET, the owner's of GameSpot have been speculated in firing Jeff Gerstmann in order to please Eidos. CNET report to say that Jeff was already in trouble for his tone and that "GameSpot [does] not terminate employees based on external pressure from advertisers". However, many are finding this hard to believe.

Now there has been a lot of things going on at the GameSpot website, although no one has commented on the what has really happened. Many of the staff at GameSpot have posted their reactions including popular past figures like Rich Gallup, Greg Kasavin, Bob Colayco and Carrie Gouskos: http://www.virtualfools.com/games/jeff-gerstmann/

Many of GameSpot's users have swamped message boards asking why this has happened, what will happen to GameSpot's credibility and proposing campaigns to have a GameSpot black out or to bring Jeff back.

The Kane and Lynch: Dead Men review itself has also been subject to many changes. The video review was pulled while the review and 6.0 rating remain. And a note was placed,

Editor's Note: This review has been updated to include differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions and a clarification on the game's multiplayer mode.

The user's rating system has been disabled and stuck at 2.6.










The Kane and Lynch video review that was pulled by GameSpot:


Here is a source as the story updates...

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/30/rumor-gamespots-editorial-director-fired-over-kane-and-lynch-rev/


Now you may be wondering why this is important to the games industry. Well because of this, if the rumour is indeed true, the whole gaming world's reviews and scoring system will have lost massive credibility. Game media and reviews play a much larger role in this industry than people realize.


UPDATE: GameSpot have stated that Jeff Gerstmann's termination was due to internal processes, nothing at all to do with external advertising, so called Kane and Lynch. And that the false conspiracy was all due to an amount of bad luck and coincidence.

Q: Was Jeff fired?

A: Jeff was terminated on November 28, 2007, following an internal review process by the managerial team to which he reported.

Q: Why was Jeff fired?

A: Legally, the exact reasons behind his dismissal cannot be revealed. However, they stemmed from issues unrelated to any publisher or advertiser; his departure was due purely for internal reasons.

If you listen to the latest edition of The HotSpot, the GameSpot team are extremely sincere. I believe that GameSpot's readers (including myself) should give them a chance to get their site back together.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6183666.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=multimodule&tag=multimodule;picks;title;2

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