There's been a substantial ballyhoo across all of the internets recently with GameSpot's firing of its long standing editor, Jeff Gerstmann. This controversy has been referred to as Gerstmanngate in the long-standing and incredibly tedious tradition of ending any controversial issue in "gate" in reference to the Watergate scandal. I would just like to state to the world right now: Stop it.

Jeff was widely respected in the gaming community by all those who didn't think he was batshit crazy, and many that think he was.

The story started out pretty clear. Jeff had been fired for putting up a negative review of Kane and Lynch at a time when Eidos had put up massive amounts of cash for a full "reskin" of the site, a large investment of advertising. Eidos complained and pulled off their advertising, and Gamespot in turn pulled off Jeff. That didn't really come out as I intended. At least one other staff member (Tim Tracy, a long time friend) quit in protest.

The facts suppor...

There's been a substantial ballyhoo across all of the internets recently with GameSpot's firing of its long standing editor, Jeff Gerstmann. This controversy has been referred to as Gerstmanngate in the long-standing and incredibly tedious tradition of ending any controversial issue in "gate" in reference to the Watergate scandal. I would just like to state to the world right now: Stop it.

Jeff was widely respected in the gaming community by all those who didn't think he was batshit crazy, and many that think he was.

The story started out pretty clear. Jeff had been fired for putting up a negative review of Kane and Lynch at a time when Eidos had put up massive amounts of cash for a full "reskin" of the site, a large investment of advertising. Eidos complained and pulled off their advertising, and Gamespot in turn pulled off Jeff. That didn't really come out as I intended. At least one other staff member (Tim Tracy, a long time friend) quit in protest.

The facts supported this theory. Gerstmann was fired. Gamespot refused to confirm or deny anything citing laws intended to protect people who have been fired. The site did have advertising for Kane and Lynch when the review went up. Gamespot modified his review (though NOT the final score) and pulled down the video review. The reskin was removed. Tim Tracy did in fact quit.

The reader backlash was fierce and immediate, with a widespread boycott of GameSpot, subscribers unsubscribing en masse. More moderate gamers took the stance that we couldn't really know what happened, and shouldn't judge with the dirth of information, but these moderates were a quiet voice among the howls of protest.

In the week or so since that happened, though, the waters have muddied up a little more. Tor Thorson, a high profile writer for GameSpot, finally posted an FAQ covering in as much detail as he could get what actually happened. To be completely honest it's unconvincing. Some parts of it are reasonable, but others reek of spin and sloppy justification.

Allegedly this is what happened: Gerstman had a performance review, not related specifically to Kane and Lynch, though that may have been a factor, but more due to long standing issues between him and management. The video review was removed because there were microphone issues that meant the sound was poor quality. The content of the text was changed to better reflect its (unchanged) score. Tim Tracy left the company purely by coincidence. The "reskin" of the site was removed at a long pre-determined time, and was in fact automated. Eidos was unhappy with the review, and said so to management, but that did not affect any decision making processes.

Some of that is believable. Automated site re-skinning is not only possible, but by far the most reliable method. It's very believable. The fact that the review went up at the same time there was advertising is well beyond coincidence. Of course it did. That's when the game came out, so of course the review and advertising were up at the same time. The changing of the text of his review is a different matter. Text was apparently changed as the review was excessively negative considering its score of 6.0 being "OK". It's interesting that it was decided to match the review to the score, rather than lowering the score to match the review.

The biggest sticking point for most people has been the "microphone failure" on the video review, with many people stating that the audio quality on it was no worse than most of the other video reviews published, and that the "microphone failure" has a "dog ate my homework" level of BS attached to it.

Thorson has now himself come under fire, being largely vilified as a corporate shill, a backstabber of his colleague, a puppet of the beaurocracy, and a bunch of other names my mum calls me. The vitriol has been so intense Thorson has removed his name from the FAQ and it now just lists "staff" in an effort to curb the hate mail. I'd like to join in with a number of other writers and express my distaste for that kind of nonsense. There's no excuse for hatemail or abuse. Ever.

There are three key questions that gamers want answered.

1. Was Jeff fired because of his Kane and Lynch review bothering Eidos?
2. If not, what was he fired for?
3. What other compromises are made for publishers in terms of reviewing.

The official word from GameSpot (now that there is some) is "No, None of your business, None ever" respectively.

I have to be honest. Call me naieve, but I actually believe them. While I have no doubt his review of Kane and Lynch was a difficulty for management no company would fire its editor for a negative review of a bad game. It's possible that his attitude or response had more to do with his removal than the review itself, and there have long been rumours of friction between Gerstmann and C|NET's bigwigs. With regard to not telling us why he was fired, that is a right they have. While it may clear the air in terms of this issue it really isn't information that the public "need to know" and Gamespot and Gerstmann do have a right to keep it "in the family" so to speak.

The final issue really is that of editorial integrity. Do advertisers put pressure on sites such as Gamespot to improve game scores or give favourable treatment? Has the lid been blown off, or is this a storm in a teacup, a mistaken misperception?

Again, in a spirit of honesty, I suspect the latter. While GameSpot's actual policy might differ from their publically stated policy it seems unlikely that any "cash for reviews" issues would have come up by now. And as someone working in the games reviewing industry for a long time we can state honestly that we've never been offered nor taken any money that came with strings attached in terms of editorial content. We would. But we haven't.

That's not to put GameSpot as blameless in this. There are a couple of things they did that either caused or exacerbated the issue.

First of all, they fired Jeff Gerstmann in the first place. Whenever someone leaves one company at a high profile position there is always speculation and rumour. Secondly they fired him just before Christmas. "Happy Holidays, Jeff! As your Christmas bonus we have decided to SHIT ON YOUR HEAD." That's pretty scroogy, and at the very least, waiting until early next month might have been a better plan.

Thirdly they completely failed to take into account appearances. It doesn't matter what happened. It matters what people think happened, and the timing here was so bad that the original "wrote a negative review of an advertisers game and got fired for it" takes Occam's Razor, shaves with it, and folds it back into a little travelling shaving case while whistling a jaunty tune. By contrast the faulty mic, general performance review, dog ate my homework version uses Occam's Razor to cut its wrists then lies in a bathtub listening to emo music as the water turns red with the blood of GameSpot Complete unsubscriptions.

Last, but by no means least: They were far too slow to respond. C|NET is a big company. Big enough that they have an otherwise unusable character in their name. That's big. Big means slow and the internet media moves way too fast for that. It takes a week for C|NET's lawyers to finish drafting the "party of the first person" and the bigwigs to give approval for an initial assessment committee to determine whether a provisional meeting should be held to determine if these "internet people" constitute a likely ongoing issue that could impact on ongoing revenue. In that time 20,000 bloggers have posted definitively that GameSpot fired Gerstmann for being honest about a game, and the fat cats with big wigs at C|NET took the money instead of the journalistic integrity.

By the time they posted a response anything said looked like (and partially probably was) just spin. This has been a harsh lesson for GameSpot. They've learned how fickle the gaming market is and how quickly the internet can spread (mis)information that can cause a surprising amount of damage to your reputation. And your profitability. GameSpot will have learned now that they need to be more agile on PR issues, and that they may need to be more open in future, to attempt to regain a trust that (fairly or not) has been shattered.

So now is the time for you to have your say. Will you go back to GameSpot? Will their reviews be forever tarnished? Can you forgive and forget? Have you pulled your GameSpot Complete subscription? Hit the forums and let us know.