[News] Reviewer fired for 6.0 score

What started out as an iffy rumor proved to be true yesterday as GameSpot editor Jeff Gerstmann (who you may remember as "the guy who only gave Twilight Princess an 8.8") was fired Wednesday morning for his less-than pleasant review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. Eidos, who had apparently spent lots of money on promoting the game through banner and "background" ads on GameSpot's site were outraged at the score, and pressured GameSpot to reprimand Gerstmann at their expense.

Destructoid.com has the whole story:

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Ladies and gentlemen, I would advise you to all to duck as there will almost certainly be a large amount of splatter coming from every fan near you as a result of the news I have to share.

Primotech has a story up claiming insider information regarding the firing of Gamespot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann. Mr. Gerstmann recently awarded Eidos' Kane & Lynch: Dead Men a 6.0 score while Eidos was pumping a large amount of advertising cash into Gamespot, and shockingly this pissed off some of the higher-ups. In a much less sarcastic instance of the word "shocking" instead of merely admonishing him -- which would have been unethical in its own right -- the powers that be fired Mr. Gerstmann (and may have slapped his wife).

Also, Gerstmann's video review of Kane & Lynch, the straw that broke the camel's back, has since been taken off the site, but it still available on YouTube.

There's no telling what could come of this, that's for sure. Let's hope Gerstmann gets some support from the industry.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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For all you know he had it coming and this is the whole staw/camel's back thing. If it IS just because of Eidos here, than that's even dirtier than the current situation already is, but fucking come on. It's far more likely this isn't JUST related to this one isolated event.

That's true, we don't know the whole story yet. All GameSpot has told us so far is that they can't comment on their employees, which is fine, so Gerstmann himself will probably have to come forward. After all, maybe there was some internal issues at GameSpot/CNET we wouldn't know about.

What we do know, however, comes from an anonymous colleague of Gerstmann's who says this review, if not the primary reason, was definetly a catalyst for him being let go - and that's the big issue here. It's something he shouldn't have been punished for, let alone fired. To me, it's more of a morality thing than anything else, but I won't press the issue, nor will I condemn any one party until someone gives us more info. Too many names have been sullied already, and darn it, I like GameSpot - their news anyway. That busy website design I can do without.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

According to Wired, a member of the CNET advertising team who worked on the Kane & Lynch ads posted a message on Forumopolis that has since been deleted:

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The ads went up and the Eidos brouhaha was settled over two weeks ago. Jeff got fired yesterday. Furthermore, I'd heard a few people tell that he'd already been skating on thin ice for "unprofessional reviews and review practices." I don't know much about that, though, so I can't say one way or the other. My gut tells me that he got canned for larger reasons. Maybe the Eidos debacle was part of it -- I don't know. But I sincerely doubt that Eidos made Gamespot fire him. CNET doesn't kowtow to its advertisers, and I've more than once seen the higher-ups turn away big advertising dollars for the sake of the company's integrity.I think the whole thing is likely a combination of factors, the biggest being poor timing.

It's still hard to say exactly what the primary reason for Gerstmann's departure was - we're getting a lot of conflicting stories - but apparently GameSpot had a problem with, among other things, his tone when writing reviews. It may not be so much a matter of what score he gave Kane & Lynch, but how he reviewed it - or it may have been something larger that both GS and Gerstmann feel we have no business knowing about. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, like why would a senior editor with ten years under his belt suddenly be thrown out for "unprofessional reviews"? Why now? Why not five years ago?

Tycho at Penny Arcade has this to say:

Originally Posted by Tycho

I will tell you the Gerstmann Story as we heard it. Management claimed to have spoken to Jeff about his "tone" before, and no doubt it was this tone that created tensions between their editorial content, the direction of the site, and the carefully crafted relationships that allowed Gamespot to act as an engine of revenue creation. After Gerstmann's savage flogging of Kane & Lynch, a game whose marketing investment on Gamespot alone reached into the hundreds of thousands, Eidos (we are told) pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of future advertising from the site.

Management has another story, of course: management always has another story. But it's the firm belief internally that Jeff was sacrificed. And it had to be Jeff, at least, we believe, precisely because of his stature and longevity. It made for a dramatic public execution that left the editorial staff in disarray. Would that it were only about the 6.0 - at least then you'd know how to score something if you wanted to keep your Goddamned job. No, this was worse: the more nebulous "tone" would be the guide. I assume it was designed to terrify them.

Still nothing conclusive, but let's keep our hopes up that it isn't all foul play.

How ya doing, buddy?