An article I wrote about the Gerstmann/Eidos debacle
Originally written on December 12, 2007 and appeared in Rowan University newspaper The Whit in the issue of that week.
If you aren’t familiar with the gaming realm you probably missed the recent controversy which rocked gaming media two weeks ago. Jeff Gerstmann, who reviewed games at Gamespot.com for nearly 11 years, was fired. Big deal right? When rumors start spreading saying he was fired because he gave a game a poor review though, then it IS a big deal. The game in question is the title “Kane & Lynch: Dead Men” and it was developed by IO Interactive and published by Eidos Interactive.
Dubbed “Gerstmanngate” by the gaming press, the story states that Eidos, displeased with the review their game received, pulled some strings in Gamespot’s management to get Gerstmann fired for his review. Coincidentally, Eidos paid a great deal of money to advertise Kane & Lynch all over the Gamespot website and on a number of other websites as well.
There is also some evidence pointing to Gerstmann being fired for his review but even now it is still unclear if what happened was purely coincidental or not. Shortly after his review was posted, it was taken down and the text was altered to shed the game in a more positive light. The video review was also removed from the site because, according to Gamespot, “[the video’s] audio was deemed inferior due to a faulty microphone.” Now, I’ve seen the video myself and his voice was quite clear and there was never a moment when I didn’t understand what he said. Lastly, a day after Gerstmann was fired on November 28, all Kane & Lynch advertisements were removed from the Gamespot website.
Amongst all of the widespread controversy and rumors going about, Gamespot released an article in an attempt to answer all of the pertinent questions. Due to legal reasons, Gamespot will not be revealing the actual reason why Gerstmann was fired but they claim it was because of internal reasons. In regards to the timely removal of the advertisements Gamespot said, “Due to design and development considerations, media buys on GameSpot are made weeks in advance. The timing of said ads was extremely unfortunate but was purely coincidental and determined solely by the game’s release date of November 13, 2007.” Gamespot goes on to say, “Internal documentation filed before the review appeared shows that the site skin was scheduled to run from November 17 to 29, 2007.”
While Gamespot does provide good reasoning behind what happened, the argument hoisted by the public also seems to hold some water as well. In my opinion, there are far too many coincidences going on here and Gamespot dances around the most important question: Why was Jeff Gertsmann fired?
Despite the fact that this story only dealt with videogame reviews, who is to say that things like this don’t happen for other products? How many times did you not agree with a review because it was so far off? Is all of this purely coincidence or the acts of companies trying to get a positive spin on their products? Are reviewers pressured to give a positive review or risk losing their jobs?
We may never know.
To view Gamespot’s response in its entirety go here
Also go here for another story of note.
January 27, 2008 at 8:21 am
Well said, friend. As a fellow videogame lover and videogame journalist hopeful, this story struck a chord with me too. I have always had a great deal of respect for gamespot because of their thorough and what i thought were honest, game reviews. this situation, however, has tainted my perception of the site. i used to check the site almost every day, but now find myself using competitors 1up, kotaku, and joystiq.
the 1up people protested germann’s firing and showed up to the gamespot office to show their solidarity. in this month’s egm, the editor-in-chief called out several companies that withhold products from the magazine because of poor coverage in the past. do you think that egm and 1up is entirely honest or if they just took this situation as an opportunity to make themselved look good in comparison?
January 27, 2008 at 2:05 pm
It’s tough to say if egm and 1up honesty is not without any ulterior motives since we aren’t physically inside the editors room to see decisions being made. I feel that egm and 1up did take advantage of the situation to differ themselves from the “other” publications and websites but I feel it was a good move on their part. I frequent the 1up site and found their reviews are much more critical than other places and I applaud them for it. I am not too familiar with egm though.