This sounds completely inane to me, how much fun would the David Letterman show be without David and just have the band and regular guests appearing? The show would die. What I’m seeing right now is that Gamespot fans are already making up excuses to stick around, mainly because they don’t have another big corporation to flee to that has the same features on their site, outside of maybe 1UP or IGN. I feel like if you have any sort of integrity about how you wish to be treated (instead of being kept in the dark like Gamespot has so poorly dealth with this situation by publicly ignoring you) then you’ll leave the site permanently. Why? Because if review tones/scores can be influenced, so can previews, so can every other exclusive feature be spun around till management is happy with it and knows they’ll make their advertisers happy by praising it more to get more advertiser deals. If you look at Penny Arcade, they first want to play every game an advertiser wants to advertise, if they think the game sucks, they won’t accept their ad deals. On IGN they went as far as to make the two departments separate without communication. So it can be done. Even here on VGB, I have the right to decline an advertiser if I object to their game or the ad content. That’s freedom of choice, and the second those editors accepted Jeff got fired over being honest but too negative in management’s eyes, those same editors became tools of the company instead of writers free to say what they want. I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes, they obviously have bills to pay and who else is going to pay them $60,000 a year to write about playing games? Still, their conscience isn’t clear.

And for the record, neither Cnet nor Eidos had anything to do with this, it was the new Gamespot management, the people that run Gamespot that did this. And Eidos just did what any advertiser would do, you can’t advertise a product and expect it to sell at the place where the owners are saying its crap. / Rant over!

I didn’t even care to click on the review of Tabula Rasa…

But since then I have decided that I will stay with GameSpot, in part because (as some others have stated), there ARE other personalities working at GameSpot that I do like (although Jeff was one of my favorites) and it would be doing a disservice to them, when they had nothing to do with the firing of their comrad. And although I am angry at CNET . . . I really don’t think that this anger should be leveled at GameSpot for the aforementioned reason.

These guys are just doing their job, they don’t have anything to do with the whole corporatoration itself.

I will however take reviews from GameSpot with a grain of salt now. Which is a sad turn of events, since I always thought GameSpot was one of the most trustful review sites, given that they tend to grade lower and the personalities who work there are trustworthy (or so I thought).

I also am still proud of the various emblems I have on my profile and I would hate to give all that up just becuase of the unfortunate turn of events. However if all the personalities were to leave GameSpot and go somewhere else, then I wouldn’t have any reason to visit the site outside of the large and active community where I keep one of my blogs.

Thanks for the comments everyone! And I’m glad to hear that you guys were really looking forward to hearing our take on this whole situation.

I just hope that lessons have been learned here.

WE GOTTA TAKE A STANCE HERE AND NOW…

I really ain´t going to Gamespot for the reviews, etc anymore… they are now in the game industry… well corporate bitch Numero 1. Now no one will ever take them seriously again. A sad ending to what had become such a place.

Maybe some new undeground indy game site will arise with Jeff or someone at the helm and continue on with the GS spirit… let it become a new body for the GS spirit to be reborn into… stronger then ever.

Glad to see VGB take a stance on this issue. Kinda worried for a minute there.

Shout out to Reeteshinator, Nuck Nuck and Po-Jo.

Reeteshinator, the reason we didn’t update last week is because back then it was still a rumor and we were waiting on gamespot/cnet to give a decent comment. When it turned out all they had to say was basically a “no comment” after firing the face of their website, it became pretty obvious all the stories from insiders from reliable sites were true.

Let me just state the obvious, our review ratings will not be influenced by our ads. I’ve always told Astro that if either of us disagrees with the other, we can add a second opinion with a different rating to the review. Besides, we’re independent bloggers, free to write what we want without a corporate structure breathing down on our necks. As this situation shows, it’s much more important to have the trust of readers.

I am curious though, do any of you Gamespot regulars still visit? I mean a familiar face got kicked out without goodbyes after 11 years, it’s almost criminal how little care that shows for the readers. And how can you still trust a site who’s remaining reviewers just let themselves be walked all over by management?