Jeff Gerstmann Fired From Gamespot, the Internets Explode As Result

Filed in archive News on November 30, 2007

Wow. I think the internet has exploded. Gamespot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann is one of the few "big name" reviewers that video game fanboys instantly recognize. Lately, though, he has been making a reputation as a tough cookie, having infamously given twilight Princess an 8.8 (really not that big a deal, to be honest with you, even though I totally disagree with the score).



So the firing of Gerstmann comes as a shock. Even more shocking are rumors- and, to be sure, this blogger has seen absolutely nothing that is NOT in the realm of message board innuendo, that Gerstmann was canned because he gave Kane and Lynch: Dead Men a very low review score of 6 out of 10. Eidos had a large advertising campaign with Gamespot, and they were pretty mad, I guess, at the low review. The timing of all this is what mostly stinks.

Yet and still, you cannot just assume that something is so because of some correlational reason. I'm not going to do the "blogger thing" and leap to conclusions and opine about the lack of objectivity with the big review sites; that's silly- it isn't that hard to study a particular reviewer's tendancies and know what the biases are going in.

So what do I think of his Kane and Lynch review? Well, the "rumor" is that Eidos was upset with the "tone." Well, I didn't really find anything that seemed polemic in the review. The arguments seemed quite sound. That said, I haven't played the game (I find the premise to be repugnant, for one thing) so I have no clue if what he says about the AI is correct or not, so the publisher could have a point if he reported outright falsehoods in the review.

We will be debating this for a long time on forums like NeoGAF. Here's a sampling of what is going on in the internets regarding the Gerstmann story:

The Videogamecritic.net's message boards seem to have a balanced view, with some interesting defenses of Gamespot. One user seems quite certain that the evidence is "in," while another points out that Gerstmann was losing his professionalism. I'm also attacked for not reading the Tea Leaves (I post under Feilong80 on that board).

This blogger at Gamespot hints that maybe Jeff was getting tired of the job anyway.

Penny Arcade isn't taking any prisoners here (as usual). They jump right out and with their latest cartoon and say what they believe happened.

On this message board, a guy purporting to be from Eidos talked about how he was pretty sure Gerstmann wasn't canned to due his negative review. Then, after getting linked to every blog in the universe (because, you know, a message board is PUBLIC), he deletes his post and then goes on a rampage about the evils of bloggers, blah blah blah blah.

Finally, here is the infamous Kane and Lynch review in all of its glory.