Gamespot editor fired over negative review?
 

We've heard an unsettling rumor today from an anonymous tipster that longtime game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot has been let go. That wouldn't necessarily be newsworthy, but the conditions under which he was allegedly dismissed were. According to the source, Gerstmann was fired "on the spot" due to advertiser pressure for his review of Eidos' Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. A visit to Gamespot shows that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game has taken over the site very prominently, with backgrounds and multiple banner ads all pitching Kane & Lynch. Allegedly, publisher Eidos "took issue with the review and threatened to pull its ad campaign."

Jeff's review was certainly less than glowing. He assigned the game a 6.0, otherwise known as "Fair" on the Gamespot scale. The game is currently enjoying a Metacritic score in the 65 to 69 range, which the site describes as "mixed or average reviews." According to our tipster, it wasn't necessarily the score that was reason for Gerstmann's rumored axing, but the "tone" of the review.

Gerstmann has been no stranger to controversial reviews, as his scores of 10 for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and 8.8 for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess had sensitive internet users up in arms. It's now possible that many bitter fanboys may have had their wishes for his firing granted.

As our tipster points out, if the rumor is true, it could point to a distressing precedent at Gamespot and parent company CNet. "As writers of what is supposed to be objective content, this is our worst nightmare coming to life," wrote the tipster.

Our efforts to confirm the story with Gamespot hasn't proved successful. Our current requests with PR, Gerstmann and other CNet contacts have either gone unanswered or yielded a "no comment."

From http://kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/games...iew-328244.php

If that's true that's pretty much bullshit.

I trust Gamespot's reviews because more often than not, they coincide with my own opinions. There is a flaw in the system, though: only 1 reviewer contributes to the score a game gets. I like EGM's 3 man team review system, because you get to hear about the game from more than one perspective (especially when the reviews are mixed). At least Gamespot also has a general critic's score and a user score as well, so you can see how much reviewer bias is happening.

Nevertheless, allowing your reviewers to be pushed around by publishers is gay as hell. Another reason I am all over EGM's nuts: they never back down on their reviews.

Damn fucking straight. This is complete utter horseshit. If they want the reveiws for their games to be great then they should stop making average games, the stupid nazi fuckwits.

I am really pissed off about this.

I've never even heard of the guy or anything. Just that it's so fucking wrong.

Cocksucking faggots.

Personal opinions mean jack when there is money to be had, even in video games.

Yeah, it's why I don't read Nintendo Power and Game Informer. EGM 4 lyf

This is total bullshit

I mean 8.8 for Twilight Princess?

WTF!

He obvioulsy knew nothing and it's good he's gone
























Seriously though, this is out of order (the firing, not the Zelda rating)

Sucks for him if it's true, hopefully he can find work elsewhere. I don't use Gamespot, so I can't say much about how I feel about their reviews, but I do use some of their sister sites like Mp3.com and TV.com, and Kane and Lynch is definitely not the first poorly reviewed title (whether it be a game, tv show, album, etc.) to be featured prominently on a CNET site. Sounds like Eidos is a little overly sensitive about their new game.

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men really disappointed me, by the way. I had high hopes after reading some preview buzz a few months ago, but it's a pretty mediocre game.

For all the decent games Eidos puts out, they've got a lot more mediocre games as well.

Sounds like they just can't face the music... especially since it seems like they were hoping it would be a huge hit.

This is such a petty and childish move. My 5 year old nephew shows more maturity than this.

That would mean more if they ever had a review that was even remotely controversial.

Pretty sure egm also gave Kane and lynch 6's and a 7. They gave the orange box game of the month over halo 3. That was controversial to legions of people. Not me, because I agree, but still.

That's the closest they come to controversy?

It would have been "controversial" if they had picked Halo over Orange Box, or given them both the award.

Also, last time, you have the example of Lair, which EGM ranked at exactly the average of overall reviews. This time, you're giving an example of Kane and Lynch, a game which is averaging 7.

(In fact, EGM gave K&L a slightly above average review...Stick it to the establishment)

So...The extent of their radical divergence from the pack seems to be that they give slightly off-average reviews of a couple of games, or....

Because from the view of someone without their lips all over EGM's junk, they look like a weathervane, blowing in the same direction as every other mag out there.

Who the fuck cares. Reviews are all bullshit anyways. You can't trust anything because of the fact that there might be stings being pulled behind it, tampering a review. Companies do whatever needs to be done to get the $$$.

Should the goal be to be controversial or to give a fair unbiased review?

I didn't say their reviews were controversial (in fact they are quite fair), just that EGM doesn't buckle when advertisers who want their games to receive better scores threaten to pull ads.

Confrontation. Good way to debate an issue. :y::roll:

Wasn't trying to start a confrontation really. Me and KK have had enough of those that usually go unresolved. Just wondering what the appeal of issueing a controversial review is.

I berieve the point he's making is that EGM's reviews aren't exactly controversial (they're not, really), so what I said about not backing down from advertisers isn't all that meaningful.

I'm wondering why this game was so different that Eidos got so angry. Must've been a 'last straw' type of thing.

I'd say from the way they've been pimping it online and on TV that they expected it to be up there with the stream of FPS awesome that's been coming out as of late.

I wager a lot of advertisers threaten to pull their ads from a magazine which gives the same scores as pretty much every other mag.

That just makes so much sense.

This isn't the first time this has ever happened. The Penny Arcade guys got so much shit for bad-mouthing the second (new) Prince of Persia game on the site because they were licensed to draw ads for the game itself. They have a pretty good discussion about it posted recently when Assassin's Creed started getting some crummy ratings.

I know not many people would like Gamepro, but for them, it's even more interesting, because they give games that end up getting less than perfect scores the cover features (then and now), and by some of their more popular reviewers have had the byline on the reviews (they have said there are more than one reviewer in their opinions, but only one person actually writes the review). And I don't remember anyone getting fired like this.

To be fair to Gamespot, too, this hasn't been the first controversy with this guy they have had, and the story did say that it wasn't just the score, but the language that it was written. However, the actual review (http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/acti...en/review.html) doesn't really have anything in it that strikes me as controversial, unless the reviewer was lying about things that never happened in the game or had an agenda against the game.

Sounds like Eidos is a company full of egotistical pricks, and GS is caving in to pressure.

Nooooo not Jeff :'(

Speaking of negative ratings, did anyone see the smackdown 2008 review for the wi on gamespot? 4.5

http://uk.gamespot.com/wii/action/sm...summary;review

Can't really say im suprised, i never thought that the wii controls would work well for a wrestling game.

Naw, gotta be the controls.

To be honest, I wish they'd just do Day of Reckoning 3 or something, though. We need another platform for SVR like we need to be humbled by JBL.

DoR 3 with branching stories and the moves from the SvR series added to it would be spectacular.

And layers in CaW, and not limiting story mode to created wrestlers.

I'm boycotting Kane and Lynch

That'll show em.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

I was already boycotting Eidos since they haven't published a game I want since Championship Manager 03/04, so I guess that doesn't really count.

For those who are interested (i.e. Nicksturbed), Gamespot video guy Tim Tracy has quit, possibly relating to this, and Alex Navarro posted the following on his GameSpot blog:

Bad Analogy Time

Remember SimCity? Remember what a joy it was to build up a fully functioning, living, breathing city, full of life and wonderment? Then, at some point down the road, after you've built up your city to the peak of its productiveness, you'd start mashing the disaster button and a wide variety of tornadoes, earthquakes, and fake Godzillas would come tromping through, laying firey waste to every bit of what you'd worked so painstakingly to create?
Yeah. It's a little bit like that. Except someone hit the disaster button for me.


Posted by AlexN, Nov 30, 2007 4:06 pm GMT 175 Comments

Interesting.

If true, that would explain why lately the reviews have been coming out slower. I remember a couple of years back when reviews would come out 4 or 5 days before the game was out.