Did GameSpot Commit Brand Suicide with Jeff Gerstmann Firing?

If I may, from my reply to BobC:

I could see if certain "action-centered" achievements weren't in with the review copy, and I could also see it if there hadn't been any at all. But to tell us that there was only that one achievement for progress when the game was reviewed defies any sort of logic. Frankly, we're less like Nancy Drew than you are the masked man at the end of every Scooby Doo episode complaining about "meddling kids".

And with respect to the "multiple Gamertags" thing, why would Jeff, having played the game once and given it a thoroughly middling score and an ultimately poor review, have come back and played it again?

It's great to see so many people fired-up about interference with editorial integrity. It's a shame this same fervor doesn't apply to other areas of journalism. Look at the world around us, most media outlets are controlled by major corporations in bed with the advertisers and governments.

I am a subscriber to Gamespot, have been for around 6 years. And am a fan of Jeff's, and his reviews.

Revews are the opinion of one person, mind you a person you've come to trust, and a person who plays more, and knows more about video games than any regular person could. So there is a responsibility, and respect that is earned.

Jeff has earned my respect, even though I didn't always agree with his reviews.

Bottom line, without Jeff, or a real honest reason for his firing. I will be canceling my Gamespot membership, and accounts with any CNet owned website.

How ironic that the _first_ link after the words "And GamePolitics readers shouldn’t expect to see any more links to GameSpot." is a link to page on the domain of, ahem, GameSpot.

Seems to be noone gave a fuck about this dude until now. Everyone ragged his balls off on the Twilight Princess review. Now, he's some kind o' martyr. The whole goddamn thing has been bought and sold and all these whore's are a big form of indirect advertising. Game may be shit, but the collective hissy fit with the user reviews has show that all these fuckers get what they deserve. T'ain't no man behind a curtain, just a bunch o' damn fools feigning outrage. God damn all a yew fucking twats and the whore ye rode in on. Fuck you. Fuck you. Eat a big ol' polished ball of my shit. Fuckers.

From what I'm seeing it was a case of the straw that broke the camel's back. I'll just run through what I know.
1. There isn't any rebuttal from CNet as of now.
2. Jeff's "tone" did tow the line, judging from the other posters and from what I saw.
3. Jeff panned Kane & Lynch.
4. Eidos threatened withdrawel of future advertisement money.
5. The Kane & Lynch review was edited, the video review taken off, and the review hidden within the site.
6. Jeff was locked out of his office when he was fired.
7. Many high profile sites are calling foul.
8. The other editors express shock, while ex-editors express support for Jeff.

All of this strikes me as "we didn't like his tone, but it wasn't bad enough to get him fired until he panned Kane & Lynch".

In addition, though it is a bit late, I want to say a few things in response to the other posters.

@Pandralisk
I prefer GameInformer, and their reviews are free and online on their site, gameinformer.com. I have yet to disagree with one of their reviews.

@Damning

Development takes skill, teaching takes patience, and reviewing takes balls. Not everyone can do any one of the three, and none of the three could do any of the other jobs. A single reviewer takes more shit than any single developer does, and a lapse in their reviewer's integrity can cost them their career and the trust of those who subscribe to them. Any idiot can post a "review", but that doesn't mean it is a good review nor does it mean anyone will listen to it. A good reviewer must put aside their own morals, beliefs, and biases. They must also ignore those who would influence their descisions, including readers, advertisers, the others on the staff, and the hype for the game. They have to write in a way that can be understood and appreciated, and are obligated to play all of the games features to their fullest extent to the best of their abilities. If a developer's game gets panned, it is usually the developer's fault, not the reviewer.

I personlly liked kane and lynch. I found that jeff said stupid shit like the story sucked. It did not suck it was based on several good movies. than he says you don't like any of the charicters, NO SHIT SHERLOCK edios said that about 50 times and if I remeber you loved this game at e3 jeff you cocksucker.

I hate him but he should not have been fired.

As I see the facts laid here, QJ, Gaming Today and the user as to which Dennis linked, I don't really think GameSpot did the right thing for Jeff. You can't blame Eidos either way for pulling out their ads on their site. They pay for their advertisement and they get a "Kane and Lynch is an ugly, ugly game" as Jeff's opening statement. Put the blame on GameSpot if all of these are true. Not only did they not protect their journalist for his opinions, they also yielded to their advertisers' immediate action. Credibility is down to 50% if all of these are true.

Again, the problem lies in the belief that gamespot wanted to change the tone of the review to appease Eidos. While I've not seen the un-edited article, and the only thing that was changed was the multiplayer portion according to unrefuted claims by Gamespot, the piece still seems highly critical of the game and is still very negative on the game. Not much of an appeasement.

As for the EIC confusion, I misread something about a previous EIC who had left for a better gig. Of course he was used as a source, depite being out of the loop for a time, as the events so I wasn't alone in my confusion.

I have yet to see anyone fired for questionable reasons, especially in journalism, where the wronged party isn't speaking out about it as much as humanly possible. There is nothing to be lost here by saying "they fired me because I gave a bad review" if it is the truth. If it isn't the truth, well, then there is a reason to remain quiet. That being that Gamespot would have to reveal the real reason. If he keeps quiet then Gamespot has to keep quiet. It's the rules of the game.

I never said he wasn't fired. I did say that there is a difference between casting a critical eye and jumping into a conclusion and then acting on that conclusion because you want it to be real. There is alot unknown about this and for people to be taking action on something that is just a rumor, such as saying "And GamePolitics readers shouldn’t expect to see any more links to GameSpot" before it is even closed to being confirmed is just silly to say the least. Especially coming after enough "may have" and 'if" and other words of the waffle. If someone had used as many "ifs" and "mays" to claim truth in the connection between games and violence, what would have been the reaction?

This is all based on a rumor. A rumor that Gerstmann hasn't confirmed and that everyone else has gone out of their way to deny. Nobody has quit in protest and confirmed these rumors, as you would expect in any journalistic endeavor. Nobody. They are doing what you would expect when the rumor of this nature isn't true and they don't know what is going on. They are keeping quiet about the details while supporting a friend.

There are no unusual cirmcumstances here. If they are going to fire an editor for "tone" they are going to do it after an editorial. There is no way around it. They might wait to make it easier on them to find a replacement or after a busy period, as is the claim, but none of these are unusual. Coincidental, certainly. But correlation is not causation. One can find a correlation between the size of a shoe worn by a gradeschool kid and their math ability after all.

You want to connect the dots because you find comfort in having those dots connected. But nothing here supports the connection other than coincidence. And if that is all you need then you might want to change your views on game violence which have exactly the same connectability, or more.

@ Dark Sovereign

I've not seen any confirmed source for #4. Alot of conjecture but nothing confirmed. In fact, Iv'e seen Eidos deny that they were using the advertising dollar as a weapon. #5 is off too on the last part because the review is right where it always was. The problem is that this cunning plan took 2 weeks to accomplish, rather than right when it happened, and the review had already faded into the past. For people trying to supress a bad review they are certainly doing a fine job of pointing out the problem.

This is key to it as well. Public executions are a poor way to send a message quietly. You "give him a chance to step down" while spreading the rumor in the office that he was fired and let the watercooler do the rest. Something this public just strikes a tone of the last straw as you pointed out. They finished the review season and decided that he no longer fit in with the corporate image they wanted to project. So they let him go. Firing a critic that likes to be negative is likely to happen after a bad review on chance alone. That this is some grand conspiracy requires more than timing.

It's likely that he will get picked up by some game review company somewhere. It's likely that Eidos will be advertising with that company since it's going to have the readers they want. Those that believe that he got fired because Eidos would have pulled the advertising money will just ignore this because it doesn't fit what they have already decided is true.

I read everything on the Virtual Fools site and it was all based in the same rumor. Repeating a rumor or reacting to a rumor isn't evidence that the rumor is true. If it were then we were invaded by Martians in 1938. There was no basis in fact for the invasion. It was a hoax. It was rumor. But people reacted seriously. So I put to you " Do you seriously believe that all of these people, all of these radio listeners, would be getting upset over nothing? That they would just react off baseless fiction?"

The answer to that question, by the way, is yes. And if you want we can discuss any number of baseless theories (9/11 inside job if you want something fairly recent) where it's all cojecture that people want to believe to be true.

"there very well may be a clause" isn't the same as there actually being a clause. You can't use his silence on the issue as evidence that it exists. It's circular reasoning. It's more speculation and isn't confirmed. And again, he was fired so the need for him to sign a contract to get fired seems a bit far fetched to say the least.

And why would he take such a clause in the first place? How much money do you think they would have to pay him to sell out his integrity? Which is what he would have to do to take such hush money. How could someone with the integrity to not change his review of a game be bought into silence about something far more personal?

The editor who quit did so because the firing was done without his approval. From what I can tell, the editor was above Gerstmann and did not want him fired. He quit because of that, which is actually not all that uncommon. Of course you can "very well may be" your way into another contract that keeps him from confirming the rumor as well but at some point you have to stretch this past the breaking point.

Did GameSpot Commit Brand Suicide with Jeff Gerstmann Firing?...

[...]I don?t know Jeff Gerstmann, although I met him once or twice at various E3 shows. But any working journalist can summon righteous indignation over what appears to have happened here. Fired because an advertiser didn?t like your review of their cr...

I'll go with tone. I saw the video of the review and he seemed to be making a fair number of pot shots at the artists rather than the art. It was also fairly uncompelling as a review goes. The written one is much better as a review but the video one, the one they actaully pulled, went beyond the game. At one point he called the writers lazy. There are other ways that can be done. As such:

The review by Gerstmann was an ugly, ugly, review. The writing repeated the same adjectives rather than finding new, new ones. This is just lazy, lazy writing.

Or:

The review by Gerstmann fell far from short of being a review on the game. His constant repitition of simple adjectives did more to distract the viewer than inform him. There are ways to write a compelling review about an uncompelling game but this wasn't one of them.

In the first I'm commenting on him as a person. The second it's about the review. The difference is, in some form, tone. Which is exactly the reason they said they fired him.

Since when has GameSpot been relevent? They aren't any more relevant than IGN. If you guys put any stock in their reviews, then you are only setting yourself up for disappointment.

Gamespot is dead to me now. I've grown to love all the editors that work there but this is too much for me to ignore. What CNET has done has made me so angry to the point that I'll be avoiding any CNET owned sites, to include Gamespot. I can't promise I'll never go to Gamespot since they still have a library of good reviews but I'll always think twice before clicking on my Gamespot bookmark.

Okay, I've not read this entire page of comments (so my apologies if this point has been made), but I've worked extensively with all of the major gaming magazines and sites, and with their respective parent companies, and advertising and editorial are not just hand-in-hand, but in full coitus mode at all times. Simply put, these magazines don't sell well because people expect this kind of content for free. So any possible revenue sources are made ABSOLUTE priorities, and if that means tailoring the reviews, so be it. No one should look to any free commercial site for objective reviews -- it's a business model that cannot be sustained.

I do read reviews -- my job requires it, as does my raging gaming habit -- but I only use them for basic information on the game and not on whether some 'name' liked it or not.

Gamespot had gone downhill ever since Greg Kasavin left anyway. I couldn't stand Gerstmann or his reviews, but this is pathetic if it is true.

ok, screw this. I went ahead an removed the gamespot link which was on my quick little shortcut bar and just replaced the html with IGN, gamespot is dead too me. corporate whores.

Its about time this sham sunk.