Gamespot's Kane & Lynch reviewer fired

[ArKaiN]

Veteran game writer Jeff Gerstmann has been terminated from his position at Gamespot, and some sources are claiming it happened because of his negative review of the recent Eidos release Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
Linky (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/79445-Gamespot-Editor-Fired-Rumors-Say-Eidos-Did-It)
I've played the game, and I have to say, 6.0 is a really high rating for something this crappy.

[The Muffin Man]

Two words. MEDIA OUTHOUSE.

[Spastic]

Two words. MEDIA OUTHOUSE.

This type of thread is fine in the GF. As to the main point of the thread, that is just hearsay, and if he did get fired over that review, it would have been for giving it too high a rating.

I really can't imagine a reviewer getting fired for reviewing something though, seems a little far fetched.

[NVM]

GameSpot denies it. (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/30/gamespot-denies-eidos-pressured-firing-of-gertsmann/)

Games that had been advertised to hell on review sites have always gotten low scores before without this happening. GS got death threats for giving Twilight Princess and 8.7.

[Mr. Crow]

You would think that if it were such a big deal to them that the game got a good rating, they would have, er, reviewed his review before letting him posting it up. So, I doubt this is true.

[Beefynick]

He could have been fired because the bosses did not like his attitude or something that we will never know about. I find it highly unlikely that he was fired over a bad review. If Edios was so powerful that they could fire him over a bad review, you would think they would have written a review themselves or at least checked his.

[opn4bzns]

K&L was very heavily advertised on Gamespot, and Eidos would naturally be very unhappy about a 6. Until gamespot offer a real reason for him being fired, this seems very suspicious.

[ArKaiN]

Gamespot has removed the video review from their site. Here's the youtube link to that review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FuJ81sDR2o
I can see why Eidos would be pissed off.

[Matterialize]

Well, that's pretty retarded. He was only doing his job; it's not his fault that they made a shitty game.

I wonder what they plan to do about the hundreds of negative reviews that users are submitting. Its user rating is currently sitting at 2.7.

EDIT: Here's what seems to have happened, according to Penny Arcade. Jeff Gerstmann (the reviewer) is very high in the company hierarchy, which is what allowed him to get this review out without running it by his superiors.
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.

If this is true, Eidos didn't care either way if Jeff was fired. It seems that Gamespot was just punishing him for costing them all that moolah.

[JonC]

Wow, I don't even really want to play the game now. I mean, if Eidos did make a bad game, then its a bad game, taking off a review and firing a guy isn't going to fix it. But from what I've heard before watching the video review just now, a lot of good ideas, just the execution isn't very well done.

[Cristo]

Wow, I don't even really want to play the game now. I mean, if Eidos did make a bad game, then its a bad game, taking off a review and firing a guy isn't going to fix it. But from what I've heard before watching the video review just now, a lot of good ideas, just the execution isn't very well done.

Yeah that's what I heard too. Revolutionary gameplay and interesting ideas but for some stupid reason they tried to do the combat like in the Hitman games, which well, only works in the Hitman games because it's completely different.

Anyway this is ridiculous. The same thing actually happened to Penny Arcade, sort of. Ubisoft advertised Prince of Persia 2 very heavily on P&A, paying lots of money and then when the game came out and it was shit Gabe from P&A completely slated it and basically said it was shit. Needless to say Ubisoft were quite pissed.

But what the fuck do these companies expect? That because they advertise on a site the site is automatically going to give it 9/10 and say it's amazing? I'm sorry but the internet doesn't quite work like that. Not yet at least.

[~Nexus~]

Sounds like a case of the average gaming site going corrupt. Both Eidos and GameSpot. Eidos bribe GameSpot (to give good review), Jeff doesn't work that way and gives shit review anyway. Eidos pull future advertising (over a bad review? C'mon you fucking pussies, a company is bound to get a bad review sometime!), GameSpot fire Jeff.

GameSpot = Wankers. Never liked GS. Apart from their site taking forever to load, even on DSL, they just plain suck.

[Matterialize]

Eidos wasn't bribing Gamespot to give a good review, they were just paying GS for advertising. But Jeff has a big voice in the company, I guess, so he probably ruined much of the potential sales Eidos would've gotten from the game.

[Pyro]

I always remember that guy Jeff reviewing games with a big heart, he always found something positive about bad games. So it's kind of fun seeing him trying to find good things about Kane and Lynch but at the same time being overpowered by the bad aspects of it.

[I_Smell]

I'm probably as much a member of Gamespot as I am of Explosm. Jeff Gerstmann is a cool guy, despite being a fat nerd. He was pretty much the face of Gamespot. The worst part about him being fired is that Gamespot just lost a big part of their site. See, they focus loads on giving features and videos that other sites don't have. Jeff Gerstmann hosted pretty much all of them:
The Podcast (http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/features/hotspot/index.php)
The live weekly show (http://uk.gamespot.com/shows/on-the-spot/?tag=promo%3btitle)
Tournament TV (http://uk.gamespot.com/shows/tournament-tv/)
Crazy marathon shit (http://uk.gamespot.com/video/915692/6182764/super-mario-galaxy-live-gameplay-marathon---part-1-of-12?tag=multimodule;videos;img;10)
They do new shit every week and he was their main guy. All there stuff is gonna be boring as fuck from now on. I wouldn't be surprised if he got picked up by someone else.
They seriously need to update the starting to Button Mashing (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-5512900970316533281&q=button+mashing+intro&total=6&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0), because pretty much everyone there is gone now.

[ArKaiN]

On one hand, this is fucked, the dude was just doing his job.
On the other hand, something he did cost the company tenths(possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars. I'm conflicted.

[Quadros]

On one hand, this is fucked, the dude was just doing his job.
On the other hand, something he did cost the company tenths(possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars. I'm conflicted.

The guy was paid for making honest, informed and un-biased reviews. He made an honest, informed and un-biased review, and got fired for it. That's just plain fucked up. Conflict resolved?

[ArKaiN]

The guy was paid for making honest, informed and un-biased reviews. He made an honest, informed and un-biased review, and got fired for it. That's just plain fucked up. Conflict resolved?

Thats true. It's also true that gamespot's the biggest videogame site there is, and companies don't get big by keeping people who are blamed for losing a couple hundred grand. Big companies make their money with loads of mediocre people, not with a couple of geniuses. I'm not saying it's the right way to do it, I'm just saying this is probably much more common than we think.

[Quadros]

A ton of people commit murder. Just because it's fairly common doesn't mean we shouldn't have a problem wth it.

[Demoir]

Shitloads of people have cancelled their subscriptions to Gamespot after hearing about this, he was well liked that guy.

[Matterialize]

Thats true. It's also true that gamespot's the biggest videogame site there is, and companies don't get big by keeping people who are blamed for losing a couple hundred grand.

This is entirely due to Eidos' stupidity for putting so much hype into a completely shit game. I realize you said that big companies are often comprised of mediocre people, but it still astounds me that they even bothered to release such a massive chunk of buffalo crap. I take back what I said before - I truly believe that few people would buy and keep this game, with or without Jeff's review. Eidos made a horrible game and they're trying to make it seem like Jeff is the cause of their shitty sales.

[ArKaiN]

Still, it doesn't really ring true, does it?
Everyone knows most gamers are nerds - and I don't say this in a derogatory manner - and that nerds spend a lot of their time in the internet, and that it's amazingly hard to keep stuff off the internet (like in AACS encryption key (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5-63-56-88-c0) thing). What's more, we know nerds are often vindictive - I know I am - and that firing someone as popular as Jeff as mean of censorship is a recipe for utter and complete disaster.
I guess what I'm saying is that it just sounds too stupid to be true.

UPDATE - http://www.gamespot.com/error/knl_review.html

[Clerlic]

I've never read a review before I played Kane & Lynch, it was OK. Too unrealistic and unbalanced for me though. But the graphics were nice.

[Matterialize]

UPDATE - http://www.gamespot.com/error/knl_review.html

Ha. They've crossed the line now, methinks.

[Cristo]

That is ridiculous. This is not going to go down well AT ALL.

They're getting a bit too corporate fat catty for me now, and that's not supposed to happen on the internet. BEWARE OF THE INTERNET GEEK FOR HE IS VINDICTIVE AND THOU SHALT KNOW HIS WRATH BEFORE THY DAY IS OVER.

I say we hire 4chan like Mercenaries to go fuck up GameSpot or something. Yeah. Grrrr.

[Chrisso]

I've never went to Gamespot regularly, maybe like once or twice a year. However, that review seemed very accurate. I prefer the harshest yet most truthful game review over a review that could be mistaken for an advertisement. After watching that video, I think firing this guy was a mistake. I hope he starts up at some other gaming site.

[BKS]

I've never went to Gamespot regularly, maybe like once or twice a year. However, that review seemed very accurate. I prefer the harshest yet most truthful game review over a review that could be mistaken for an advertisement. After watching that video, I think firing this guy was a mistake. I hope he starts up at some other gaming site.

From what I've seen, he has the skills, and probably fan support to do so. It's pretty fuckin lame that they fired him over this shit.


Just goes to show how corporate America can twist things to their liking.

[JonC]

Gamestop will probably regret firing him, when they start to lose a vast amount of support from visitors and whatnot. It'll be really bad if the Jeff guy gets his own website and whatnot, and/or gets hired by some other company. I hope 1up.com hires him or Gamepro. They don't seem unbiased and whatnot.

[ArKaiN]

Update: Eidos is freaked out with the whole situation and denies having anything to do with it. (http://valleywag.com/tech/great-moments-in-pr/freaked+out-eidos-ducks-cnet-firing-rumor-328636.php)
I'm officially declaring shenanigans.

[McGruff]

Wait, do you guys even know for sure that Eidos fired Jeff for a negitive review? Maybe it was his ethics, you never know what people do behind closed doors. Im thinking maybe they fired him for another reason and his review (got fed up with him?) and now everyone thinks its for his review. You never know, but neither do I.

[I_Smell]

Wow I didn't notice he did so much stuff:

Gerstmann is the founding member of the bands Headboard, The Suburban All-Stars, and Midnight Brown.

Most of the background music or intro music for shows is provided by instrumental tracks from Midnight Brown. In older video reviews at the end of the video the numerical score would be announced, Jeff also provided the voice for these scores. Additionally, Gerstmann's vocal stylings can be heard on the theme songs for Time Trotters (A single episode live-action series that was later revived in animated form), GameSpot's game show, Button Mashing, Indievelopment: a video documentary following Echelon Software's progress on their game Black Powder Red Earth and the intro to Gamespot's weekly podcast, The Hotspot.

Gerstmann also appeared on ABC's T.V. show, Good Morning America as a guest in September 1999 to discuss the launch of Sega's Dreamcast gaming console.
I thought that was all professional style music.

Also, his songs are pretty damn funny. (http://www.midnightbrown.com/)

[ArKaiN]

Yes, and maybe he finished his review for K&L and raped every other gamespot editor. But I'm going with "gave a bad review for a company that had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested on his company and got canned", since those are all known facts.

[McGruff]

Okay, I see your point. Well, if that is indeed the reason :argh: .
He was a good, honest and well based reviewer.

Christmas list:
Gamespot goes out of buisness.
-Thanks santa!

[El Mojado]

I think there might be two possibilities, which either can be true.

1. The guy got fired for something else (Sexual Herasment, Talking Shit, Stealing Shit, ETC) and decided to blame Gamespot for firing him becuase of the review.

2.He did get fired for it.

I mean there might be a lawsuit if he did get fired becuase of that review, which can probably take down the gamespot.

[ArKaiN]

Well Jeff has not released any statements yet, but lets suppose he leaked this rumor somehow.
It's still a pretty big coincidence that he gets fired for something else a day after he releases one of the most brutal reviews he's ever given a game, don't you think?

[El Mojado]

Yeah, but he may of done it on purpose.

He may of done something stupid and something that would of gotten him fired. They only give him to finish the review, so he does the review half assed. He gives it to them, and then they fire him. So then he gets fired becuase of something else of that review.

[ArKaiN]

I thought someone might spit out that retarded theory.
"You know what, you're fired. You fucked a bunch of editors in the ass, so pack your shit up and leave. But first, finish your Kane & Lynch review. We'll skip the usual steps of 100 people checking out the review before publishing it, but don't do anything inappropriate!".
No.
And I posted the review. It's on the nose.

[BKS]

And I posted the review. It's on the nose.


Explain what you mean here, I don't quite understand.

[P0K3M0N_MA5T3R]

He's a shit reviewere anyway, he seems like a right geek and whenever he reviewed wii games he was always like, "oh I have to move my hand it's to difficult because I'm too fat," he always seemed really boring in the reviews and I've never seen him smile.

[ArKaiN]

Explain what you mean here, I don't quite understand.

on the nose:
Exactly; precisely: predicted the final score on the nose. (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/on+the+nose)
He actually went easy on them. If you try playing the game, you'll eventually put your foot through the TV. There are times where you order your team to advance and they will literally start running in circles or get stuck on an invisible wall. If you're looking exclusively at the half-decent parts of the game, then yeah, 6.0, but I'd give it a solid 2.0

[ArKaiN]

UPDATE: GAMESPOT DENIES EVERYTHING (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6183666.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;0)
In a nutshell:
A) Jeff was fired for internal reasons, having nothing to do with Eidos's wrath (although they confirm Eidos was very pissed)
B)Jeff's review "did not coincide with a 6.0 score", so they decided to butcher it. (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/05/comparison-shows-significant-edits-to-gerstmanns-kane-and-lynch-r/)
C)The video review was removed because the audio and lighting wasn't very good.
D)All "Kane & Lynch" banners were removed from their site the day the scandal broke out merely due to a coincidence and
E)Jeff is prohibited to talk about the subject, according to company policy.

BULL. FUCKING. SHIT.
What do they think, we're all retards? If this is true, declare publicly that Jeff is relieved of his NDA, and let him speak his mind and get severance.

[Singapore]

Tim 'Fuckley' puts in his two cents. (http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/news.php?i=1526)

I can understand why Fuckley hardly ever comments on happenings in the VG world, at least, he doesn't do it as much as Penny Arcade. It's because he is always talking shit.

On one hand, I'm inclined to believe that Fuckley genuinely believes that there was no wrongdoing here, in which case he is every bit of an asshat as his 'comics' suggest he is.

On the other hand, he is taking the opposite view that PA took, since even though he can't stop stealing ideas from PA, he can at least steal their news-stories and then spin them in the other direction.

But enough about Fuckley, we're talking about Jeff.

Some people (i.e. GameSpot, GameSpot fanboys) have said that Jeff is a bad reviewer. Is that why they gave him a review worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or why they let him review Twilight Princess, arguably last year's best game? And didn't bat an eyelid when he gave it an 8.8/10?

GameSpot reek of shit. Hell, I might have even bought Kane and Lynch as it looked good fun. Pity this had to happen. Now I'm not going to touch it. Kiss my ass Eidos.

[gimp]

How can Jeff be fired but prohibited from talking about the subject? Or have they put him on 'leave while we determine what to do with you'?

[ArKaiN]

NDA. Non disclosure agreement. He's probably contractually bound not to talk about the reason they fired him, on penalty of losing his severance pay - money he could easily need in order to eat in the next months if nobody else hires him.
Companies can wave their NDA's if they want, though, and if they want to save their credibility and have nothing to hide, it would be the obvious thing to do.
But they took 5 days to say they took down his video review because of a faulty microphone. It's BS.

[Mr. Crow]

Tim 'Fuckley' puts in his two cents. (http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/news.php?i=1526)


Actually, that's a totally understandable and reasonable position on the matter, you fuck.

You dumb shits, don't you think that Gamespot would have looked at his review before he posted it, if it was such a big fucking deal? Nothing fucking adds up, the only evidence are a couple of events that could very well be coincidences. Put down your fucking torches and pitchforks, and stop denouncing Gamespot before you really have any fucking clue what's going on.

[Singapore]

Actually, that's a totally understandable and reasonable position on the matter, you fuck.

You dumb shits, don't you think that Gamespot would have looked at his review before he posted it, if it was such a big fucking deal? Nothing fucking adds up, the only evidence are a couple of events that could very well be coincidences. Put down your fucking torches and pitchforks, and stop denouncing Gamespot before you really have any fucking clue what's going on.

1) Jeff was a well-respected and high-level reviewer in the company. I'm sure he had the posting privileges needed to post reviews without the consent of any editors above him.

2) Every week, a multitude of new games are released on every platform. Do you think Gamespot really hires so many people to scrutinize every review before it is posted on the site? Gamespot don't want comprehensive reviews, they want fast results so they get the most traffic for having the reviews up the fastest.

3) It was reported that Eidos pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars of future advertising after the review was posted and after this happened, Jeff was fired.

4) 6.0 isn't a bad score, hence why Gamespot might not have thought that much about it until Eidos threw their shit-fit.

5) If Gamespot were happy with the review, why did they weed out all the negative references in the review and replace them with enthusiastic references or glowing references to Eidos and other Eidos games?

6) Gamespot would have said by now the real reason that Jeff was fired.

I mean really, all Gamespot have cited is 'friction' between him and the editorial staff and him giving unprofessional reviews. This is horseshit. Jeff has handled many of the most high-profile reviews in the last year (Kane & Lynch, Twilight Princess). If Gamespot were really worried about his lack of professionalism, they would never have given him such high-profile games to review.

If anything, it's Gamespot's story that doesn't add up.

There were two reasons why I called horseshit on Fuckley's newspost. Firstly, it just proves that all he does is go over to Penny-Arcade, steal some ideas and then puts his own spin on the matter (in this case, PA supported the view that Jeff was probably fired due to the bad review, whereas Fuckley took the opposite view just to look different to PA).

Secondly, Fuckley is making the same mistake you did, specifically, you're bitching at everyone claiming they know 'nothing' when you refuse to even accept that it is just too damned convenient for all these events to happen at the same time for it to just be one big coincidence.

[ArKaiN]

Actually, that's a totally understandable and reasonable position on the matter, you fuck.

You dumb shits, don't you think that Gamespot would have looked at his review before he posted it, if it was such a big fucking deal? Nothing fucking adds up, the only evidence are a couple of events that could very well be coincidences. Put down your fucking torches and pitchforks, and stop denouncing Gamespot before you really have any fucking clue what's going on.

You should get out of the habit of stating your opinions as truth without anything to back them up or knowledge of the facts.
Jeff's review was up for hours before it was taken off the review page, something that had never happened before in GS. The sound is on par with most of GS's video reviews.
GS very, very rarely lets people go. Most of these high-end VG related companies take good care of their own, and Jeff has been in GS for ten years. He was clearly fired for something that happened suddenly: he didn't post anything on the forums, didn't record anything, and can't comment on anything now. Hell, none of his co-workers know anything about it, even people who worked directly with him.
And now they release a statement that has nothing but obvious lies (coincidently, the banners for K&L were only paid for until the very afternoon when the review was released. A day later, Jeff is fired. All coincidences!) or half-truths, the first statement addressing the subject FIVE DAYS after everyone started screaming bloody murder at them.
Now go take a look at gamespot's forums. Have a look at their "subscriber's corner", where for the past four days there's nothing but "locked" threads with "I'm canceling my account. You should be ashamed" and similar.
If you still don't think anything funny is going on, get your head examined. Oh and take a look at other gaming news sites. See what they think about it.
Fuckley can suck a bag of cocks. He just thinks it's edgy ignoring all evidence and is trying to call attention to himself by standing against the tide. Which is all he does, really.

[opn4bzns]

Keep digging yourself that hole gamespot.

[I_Smell]

Holy crap I don't know where you guys are getting these facts from.
5) If Gamespot were happy with the review, why did they weed out all the negative references in the review and replace them with enthusiastic references or glowing references to Eidos and other Eidos games?

This never happened.
6) Gamespot would have said by now the real reason that Jeff was fired.
This is illeagal
Jeff's review was up for hours before it was taken off the review page, something that had never happened before in GS.
I've seen this happen loads of times.

I'm getting the idea that most people hear've never heard the name Jeff Gerstmann before this thread. Pretty sure alot of you are just using it to show how good you are at being a detective, or swearing.
I was pretty much sold as of hearing this. (http://uk.gamespot.com/pages/features/hotspot/index.php?tag=promo;title)

[Singapore]

This never happened.

Tool. (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/05/comparison-shows-significant-edits-to-gerstmanns-kane-and-lynch-r/)

[Lag]

So far all this speculation hasn't been confirmed in any way. Although the Kane & Lynch review might have played some role, he wouldn't be fired over something so essentially trivial after had made a career at GameSpot for 11 years.
It's been said by some of his closest co-workers and friends that although no definite details of his firing have or can be revealed, the guy is doing fine and getting on with his life. I suggest the same.