The Reason Jeff Gerstmann Was Fired From Gamespot

Then

Jeff Gerstmann has been at the center of a controversy in the gaming community since 2007. Jeff is a well respected video game reviewer who used to be employed at Gamespot.com as an editor. In 2007 Jeff was suddenly terminated from Gamespot, but the true reasons were never revealed. He formed a new website of his own called Giantbomb.com, which I frequent daily. 

It's Jeff Gerstmann!

It was clear that Jeff was not legally allowed to talk about the incident, but that didn't stop rumors from flying. Prior to his termination Jeff reviewed the game Kane & Lynch : Dead Men. He rated it a 6 out of 10 and wasn't afraid to say why. After his termination the review disappeared for a bit, so people became skeptical. During that time Gamespot was also outfitted with a Kane & Lynch wallpaper, which made the whole thing even more fishy. To top it off many prominent Gamespot employees left the company, some of which took up employment with Giantbomb. 

The popular belief was that the publisher of Kane & Lynch wanted Gerstmann's termination for the review, while others believed that they threatened to pull add money. However, since Jeff wasn't allowed to talk about it nothing really came out of the whole situation. He tried his best to keep quiet on the whole thing and continued on with Giantbomb. This didn't stop people on Giantbomb and people in general from thinking that Gamespot and/or IO interactive were evil for everything that happened.

Now

Jeff and the crew of Giantbomb have given quality and honest coverage for the past few years since the site launched. It seemed that they had put the Gamespot debacle behind them and that the truth would never see the light of day. That's why I was surprised when I tuned into a live stream this morning where Giantbomb announced that it had been sold to CBS Interactive, which happens to be the same company that owns Gamespot. Jeff announced that later in the day he would be revealing the story behind his termination at the Gamespot studios.

That live stream has now passed and everything has been revealed. Jeff laid everything bare, so that the matter could finally be put to rest. The debacle was almost exactly as the internet had predicted. Jeff was terminated over his Kane & Lynch review, but there was a little more to it than that.

His review of Kane & Lynch didn't paint a very pretty picture of the game and the publisher wasn't exactly pleased. The company threatened to pull advertising money from Gamespot, which is never a good sign. Normally a good company would stand by their man, but that's not exactly what Gamespot did. They were under relatively new management and they didn't know how to deal with that type of situation. According to Jeff they had never worked very closely with an editorial staff before. He was called into many meetings to speak on the subject, but it didn't seem like anything came from them.

He claimed that he continued business as usual, but then one day, seemingly out of the blue, he was terminated. He was made to sign documents claiming that he wouldn't talk shit about Gamespot and they wouldn't talk shit about him. Now that we know what happened the whole matter can be finally be put to rest.

Jeff doesn't really seem upset by the whole thing anymore. In fact, he seems to be quite pleased that he's returned to the Gamespot offices. It's clear that the Gamespot employees and the people who created Kane & Lynch had nothing to do with the whole debacle. It was the upper management of both companies who caused the problem. 

Thoughts

One of the reasons I follow Giantbomb is because of the way they cover video games. They have their own opinions that clearly aren't influenced by advertising money or other outside sources. This is how video game coverage should be. Jeff even said in the live stream that this kind of thing happens in the industry all the time, which is a little disconcerting. According to Jeff there were similar problems with a Ratchet and Clank review before the whole Kane & Lynch thing. 

As people who consume reviews this is something we should be cautious of, but I don't think we should take it overboard. I'd like to think that most game reviewers and journalists love video games too much to base their review scores around advertising money.

The live stream archive can be found here. It's certainly worth watching.

     -Manny