AnEternalEnigma
November 30th, 2007, 04:19 pm
Jeff Gerstmann, the long-standing editor-in-chief of Gamespot and employee of the site since 1996, has been fired by parent company, CNet. CNet confirmed his firing today but refused to state why.
The hot rumor is that he was fired over advertising pressure due to his less-than-stellar review of the recently released Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. He assigned the game a 6.0 and was largely negative.
Logging into Gamespot Wednesday, you would have seen the site plastered with Kane & Lynch ads. All the ads were removed a few hours after Gerstmann's review went live on Wednesday.
His review had been edited later to mention the differences between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions and to clarify the game's multiplayer. The 6.0 score still stood. The game is currently in the 65-69 range on GameRankings, so Gerstmann's review is not out of what the other reviews are.
Gerstmann has seen his fair share of review criticism's by users. There was a large enough backlash to his 8.8 review of Wii's Twilight Princess that Gamespot moderators said they would immediately blacklist anyone who brought it up again and/or continued to make personal insults of Gerstmann.
The rumors were only fueled by the lack of Gamespot's weekly video feature "On the Spot" which was conspicuous by it's abscence with no explanation. Gerstmann hosts the feature.
At 5pm on Friday, Gamespot.com became completely unoperational, giving anyone a blank, white screen when one attempts to log in.
The hot rumor is that he was fired over advertising pressure due to his less-than-stellar review of the recently released Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. He assigned the game a 6.0 and was largely negative.
Logging into Gamespot Wednesday, you would have seen the site plastered with Kane & Lynch ads. All the ads were removed a few hours after Gerstmann's review went live on Wednesday.
His review had been edited later to mention the differences between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions and to clarify the game's multiplayer. The 6.0 score still stood. The game is currently in the 65-69 range on GameRankings, so Gerstmann's review is not out of what the other reviews are.
Gerstmann has seen his fair share of review criticism's by users. There was a large enough backlash to his 8.8 review of Wii's Twilight Princess that Gamespot moderators said they would immediately blacklist anyone who brought it up again and/or continued to make personal insults of Gerstmann.
The rumors were only fueled by the lack of Gamespot's weekly video feature "On the Spot" which was conspicuous by it's abscence with no explanation. Gerstmann hosts the feature.
At 5pm on Friday, Gamespot.com became completely unoperational, giving anyone a blank, white screen when one attempts to log in.