GameSpot fired editor Jeff Gerstmann because he didn’t score game reviews high enough

4 December 2007

12 Comments

Posted by:Ferry

Before and after the advent of the internet, you heard these stories pop up from time to time, a PC or console magazine would only get an exclusive newsitem or big ad order if they rated the publisher’s game a certain review high score. Blackmailing basically. The problem is that it’s never black or white, it’s shades of gray, because on the one end there’s the writer’s integrity that’s important to him/herself and the readers, but on the other end there are bills that need to be paid. The question is a moral one, is a writer willing to lie or not? Regardless, a good boss wouldn’t put an employee in such a tough spot in the first place. Nowadays with large online gaming sites numbering in the hundreds, these practices couldn’t have vanished with the move from magazines to websites.

Since last Friday, the internet has been in upheaval over GameSpot editor Jeff Gerstmann being fired, because he supposedly didn’t score his game reviews high enough. Penny-Arcade tells the story that will never be officially confirmed due to contractual obligations between boss and employee. Before you read on I suggest you watch Jeff’s honest video review of Kane & Lynch that got pulled from the written review (which was also altered).

To quote: “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 Godd*mned job. No, this was worse: the more nebulous “tone” would be the guide. I assume it was designed to terrify them.


For Gabriel, this tale proves out his darkest suspicions. People believe things like this anyway, but they don’t know it, and the shift from intuitive to objective knowledge is startling. I think it rarely gets to this point. The apparatus is very tight: there are layers of editorial control that can massage the score, even when the text tells a different tale. A more junior reviewer might have seen their Kane & Lynch review streamlined by this process, divested of its worrisome angles and overall troubling shape. It was Jeff Gerstmann’s role high in the site’s infrastructure that allowed his raw editorial content to pierce the core of the business.”

It’s pretty obvious they didn’t fire him until after all the reviewers were done writing about all the big games. Jeff’s colleagues have been pretty sad about the whole ordeal, mostly keeping quiet in fear of their jobs. But the real question is if the review writers will stay quiet as well and buckle under the pressure of losing their job if they don’t listen to their bosses. I’ll tell you one thing, the work environment can’t be a very happy one. GameSpot has lost a lot of trust in their reader’s eyes. Right now there seems to be a massive amount of cancellations of GameSpot’s paid service, not just over the reason Jeff got fired, but since they didn’t give Jeff a proper goodbye or answered the site’s readers questions with proper answers.

Gerstmann told Joystiq in an email that: “Losing a job you’ve held for over 11 years in an abrupt manner is shocking, yes. I stand behind my work, regardless of where I do it. If there was content that I felt I couldn’t support, it wouldn’t see the light of day. … I’m not really sure what I want to do next. This whole situation has left me with a lot to think about. While this sort of clean break would be an acceptable time to think about trying game development, I feel like I still have more to say and do on the editorial side of the fence, too.”

Update:
It has just been revealed that Eidos is now LYING about the review scores given to Kane & Lynch. On the intro to their site, they say that GameSpy and Game Informer gave Kane & Lynch glowing, five-star reviews . . . . when in reality those publications did nothing of the sort. Not only that, but they then put quotes up next to these ‘glowing reviews’ that are not even from said reviews . . . but rather from old previous and “hands-on impressions” given by the publications listed above . . . . What this boils down to is Eidos’ pathetic attempt to make Kane & Lynch seem like a game that is not pure crap . . . . with an average score in the 60% by gamerankings. All in all, this only serves to not only make Eidos look pathetic by lying to gamers but also to add more fuel to the fire in regards to the previous rumor that it was indeed Eidos that helped to get Jeff from GameSpot fired by putting pressure on CNET . . . shameful. Just shameful.

Comments from Astro:
I am a longtime fan and reader of GameSpot, since the turn of the millennium really. And for all that time Jeff has been a crucial piece of the puzzle. It was always the staff over at GameSpot that won me over, particularly when they started doing all their GameSpot Live videos. So it’s more than a shame to see Jeff be outed in such a dramatic way, which is a far cry from how Greg left the site, and it iffs me that Jeff will never get to say a proper goodbye. I don’t really know who it is to put blame on through all of this, and it definitely looks very bad for the image of GameSpot/CNET and DEFINITELY Eidos who is now the biggest loser of all . . . in the end, Jeff will definitely be missed, and the reputation of GameSpot, CNET, and Eidos may forever be tarnished. Let’s hope this rings as a lesson for the future of the industry in regards to reviews and advertising.

And to Jeff, farewell! I hope that you turn up elsewhere so we can continue to be entertained by your presence and insight. GameSpot simply won’t be the same without you! *tear*