Jeff Gerstmann Fired From GameSpot For Negative Game Review

Hmm, I have been trying to keep up with the gossip floating around the net concerning the firing of Jeff Gerstmann from GameSpot.com after a not-so-high rating was given to the 'Kane & Lynch: Dead Men' video game from Eidos Interactive.

In short, the guy gave the game an average rating, and was fired very shortly after. Gamespot isn't officially commenting on the situation to say whether that was the real reason for the termination, and Jeff himself is not allowed to comment i'm sure for legal reasons, IE, he'll get the shite sued out of him if he spills the truth.

It's not like Jeff is new to this whole game either. He has been in the industry for many years (10 over at GameSpot) and is one of the industry's most trusted reviewers.

There are many supposed-gamespot employees (one in particular whose ID was 'gamespot') posting to various boards around the net under complete anonymity simply because they too are shit-scared of getting fired. They are all saying pretty much the same thing about the firing though, that it was unexpected, and they too now live in fear of losing their jobs. The gaming community itself is totally outraged by the entire incident, as the facts that we do have clearly show that the reviews they read are really based on how much money the advertiser pumps into the company. The review they read that said the game was fun, playable and addictive suddenly turns into wondering why you think the game is a big steaming turd pile after shelling out a huge wad of cash to buy it. Fake reviews piss me off! As a game maker, if my game is shit, I hope people tell me it is shit so I can spend some time making it less shit!

Reading through the facts and the board postings seem to show a similar pattern, and a few things that stick out to me like a sore thumb. Before the review went live, Eidos were pumping huge amount of advertising dollars into GameSpot to promote it all over their site. You could do all kinds of things with the content, so it was definately a big money earner for GameSpot. After the so-called bad review (which really wasn't bad, just more stating it didn't do anything special than whats already out there) it was odd that he was then canned.

The so-called GameSpot insider (his ID was gamespot) made several posts explaining the situation, and also went onto explaining a little bit about how the execs in charge of the advertising departments wanted more control of the editing department, also went on about how one particular exec doesn't know his head from a hole in the ground, and made very strong suggestions that GameSpot should alter their numbers to make the reviews better to please the advertisers, especially the advertisers who pay very well. All of the review staff are scared of this one guy as he has them convinced he can can them at any second. He is a real douchebag apparently =)

It's very interesting reading. Personally, I will never use GameSpot's services ever again. IMHO they are becoming the kind of site where the reviews are all paid for, in that the review team no longer have a choice to say if a game is a big steaming pile of shite anymore. In other words, because GameSpot reviewed it, it must always be a 100% most excellent game! As this 'gamespot' poster quite correctly put, "Expect every game reviewed by GameSpot to be Game of the Year material!" hehe.

Here are a couple of links to some useful postings about this whole thing, including the posts made by the 'gamespot' poster:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/alleged-gamespot-employee-spills-guts-on-...
http://valleywag.com/tech/jeff-gerstmann/gamespot-editor--on-fired-revie...
http://news.filefront.com/cnet-responds-to-gerstmann-firing-alleged-empl...