Gamespot Comments Officially On Gerstmann Firing

Today, Gamespot officially commented on the recent firing of Jeff Gerstmann, one of their prominent editorial reviewers. Written by anonymous "Staff," the blurb's most interesting statement refutes the widely held notion of the past few days that Gerstmann was fired because Eidos pulled its ad campaign in retaliation for a withering review of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. It states, "However, contrary to widespread and unproven reports, [Jeff's] exit was not a result of pressure from an advertiser."

The blurb goes on to quote Greg Brannan, vice president of programming for CNET Networks, who states, "Neither CNET Networks nor GameSpot has ever allowed its advertising business to affect its editorial content. The accusations in the media that it has done so are unsubstantiated and untrue. Jeff's departure stemmed from internal reasons unrelated to any buyer of advertising on GameSpot."

For just a second, I'm going to give Greg the benefit of the doubt and assume that Jeff really was fired for "internal reasons unrelated to any buyer of advertising on GameSpot." It's still the stupidest move on the planet. Like I said earlier, why fire your editorial director on the heels of a game publisher pulling their ad campaign for a bad review that the editorial director wrote? People are going to assume that's the source of the firing, whether Greg says it's "unsubstantiated and untrue" or not. If the two really are unrelated, then wait a month or two and then can him! I mean, the guy worked there for eleven years. I'm thinking those "internal reasons" could have waited another few weeks.

But I think the internal reasons were related to a buyer of advertising on GameSpot, in this case, Eidos. Jeff authored a withering review (magnified more in video format) and pissed Eidos off so much, they took their money and left. How much money exactly? I'm not sure, but Penny Arcade mentioned not thousands or tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's a lot of money. Seeing that much money walk off the table must have pissed GameSpot off to the point where they reacted with red-blooded corporate anger and fired Gerstmann, perhaps without thinking ahead to the dots their readers would connect when the news hit.

I think this is what happened. I don't have any proof, and the vice-president of CNET even goes out of his way to say it didn't go down like that. Nevertheless, I think that's what happened and until GameSpot or Jeff announce officially the reasons for his termination, I'll continue to believe that series of events.

By the way, I want to point out that if I were Eidos, I likely would have pulled my ad money too. It's up to GameSpot to do the right thing here, not Eidos. From Eidos' point-of-view, why pour money into ad space for a site that just got done tearing your game to tiny shreds? The answer is, you don't. And they didn't.