Recent events involving the fiasco with Eidos and one unnamed reviewer at Gamespot provided the world with interesting insights how mainstream gaming media works.

At least, that's what this article at Kotaku indicates.

We've heard an unsettling rumor today from an anonymous tipster that longtime game reviewer Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot has been let go. That wouldn't necessarily be newsworthy, but the conditions under which he was allegedly dismissed were. According to the source, Gerstmann was fired "on the spot" due to advertiser pressure for his review of Eidos' Kane & Lynch: Dead Men. A visit to Gamespot shows that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game has taken over the site very prominently, with backgrounds and multiple banner ads all pitching Kane & Lynch. Allegedly, publisher Eidos "took issue with the review and threatened to pull its ad campaign."

Jeff's review was certainly less than glowing. He assigned the game a 6.0, otherwise known as "Fair" on the Gamespot scale. The game is currently enjoying a Metacritic score in the 65 to 69 range, which the site describes as "mixed or average reviews." According to our tipster, it wasn't necessarily the score that was reason for Gerstmann's rumored axing, but the "tone" of the review.

How does this make you feel? Is all the opinions of mainstream gaming journalism of past and present now tainted by these facts? Was it all a lie? Who should we trust? Were all the "greatest games evah!!!" really great games or was it an illusion conjured by masterful bribes and hypes? Opinions and feelings are waited.

follow-up

It is always a fine balance between advertisers and the reviews. This is true with all advertising supported review sites in all industry's and all mediums (like magazines and TV). For a good review site to work it needs to leave the advertising department and the review department separate and not let anything get though. This is also needed in the way of advertisers 'giving gifts' to the review staff (something that IGN was accused of a while ago). It seemed that Gamespot has had this right until this this incident. If it is true (all we have so far is un-sourced statements, he could of been fired for a punch-on in the office and then people stated spreading rumors) it is up to the remaining review staff to make a stand and not let advertisers decide the scores and when there published.

I stopped trusting IGN after the gift giving thing and this is true and they don't put there foot down then I may have to stop trusting there reviews as well.

We have unsourced statements, vague statements from the editor in chief about how this wasn't his doing and everyone who used to work there seems to think this is plausible.

That's sad. But there were other games more hyped games than this one that had less than pleasing reviews*cough-Angle of Darkness-cough* . So why now ?

For anyone who is wondering about the fuss, here is the video review, re-uploaded by a user after Gamespot removed it, and here is the written review.

It makes me feel like GameSpot should be banned from MobyScore as they aren't a reliable source.

Yeah that Kane and Lynch review was actually quite good, I remember when i visited gamespot they had hell loads of promos for Kane and Lynch. Sad to see Jeff go, any idea on his whereabouts?

Check the top banner at destructoid.

For business reasons, I totally understand Eidos' move to pull its ad campaign from the site for this, but morally, I think that it's unfair for it to lead to the firing of a reviewer - just because of his opinion of said game. When looking for game information, GameSpot is the third place I look (after Mobygames and Wikipedia), and I often find them useful, but I hardly ever read their reviews (because I read the reviews from Mobygames, or search up the "reception and criticism" sections of game articles from Wikipedia). I think GameSpot should have simply removed the review and replaced one by a different author - firing an employee for his opinion seems so totally wrong.

As explained by some allegedly working at GameSpot, the reviews are approved by the team as a whole. It is not just the opinion of a single reviewer, but the opinion of the entire staff, eventually expressed by a single reviewer.

This sucks. Jeff being fired is totally wrong.

And game sites who's job it is to critique games shouldn't be advertising them so heavily.

It is the way the site makes money. If they didn't advertise games there is no way they can pay for the reviews and a game site is going to attract game companies.

Poor IO Interactive. Now their game is gaining undeservedly bad press for their publisher's actions. That's gotta make you bitter.

EDIT: Hey, this game ain't even in Mobygames database yet.

I meant they shouldn't advertise them so heavily. Like on BOTH side of the page.

It is the way the site makes money. If they didn't advertise games there is no way they can pay for the reviews

And that's why the virtuous amateurs here at Mobygames trump the major leagues any day! We are untainted by the stench of filthy lucre, only by rampant fanboism!

Exactly, I hereby challenge you all on a duel for the greatest game of all time. May the winner rewrite the history of games!!!

Wait...

When companies make games as downright contemptible as Kane and Lynch, they deserve to be called on it. I guess you'll have to go to Onion or a smaller site for objective reviews now, because everyone at GS now thinks that if they give a low score to a high-profile game, they'll be shitcanned.

What's that whole "you'll have to go to smaller sites for objective reviews now" thing supposed to mean? Since when were reviews on such heavily ad-riddled sites any believable?

My "professional review" on this whole issue is a glowing "Meh".

It's a big ethical problem. Companies offering bribes to reviewers is nothing new - the Amiga magazines were famously littered with it - but in the age of games-specific websites, there is no money coming in from readers, leaving them needing to use other methods. There are so many hyped games where the reviews are higher than the public opinion - a lot of the time it seems like we're being hoaxed. Something very similar happened to a UK paper in the 1960s - it had a reputation for honest reporting, but lost lots of tobacco sponsorship when it printed an early "smoking causes cancer" story on the same page as a cigarette advert. Eventually it closed down, and was directly replaced by The Sun, a lowest-common-denominator populist bigoted rag.

It is a bit meh. But I like seeing one of those stupid official review sites in trouble. Though it's still probably the most unfair to developers, who's game most likely is not that bad, and it was their publisher who got them into this mess. But it shows what some of us have known for a long time - there's no use in going to big gaming sites for an honest opinion, almost every big game with a big publisher has been the "greatest game evah!!". It affirms my love for "the glittering gems of hatred".

Still, I don't think I fully understand the deal here. Why on Earth has Eidos asked Gamespot to fire the reviewer guy?

So, what will firing him achieve? The review is still there, hurting the sales of Kane & Lynch. And nothing really changed. As I understand it, everybody at Gamespot read the review before publishing it and didn't find it contradicting any existing arrangements with Eidos. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to just make Gamespot change the policy in dealing with Eidos games if asking to remove the review is out of question?

I think there is more to this story.

You mean something like that the guy slept with someone's wife?

This is horribly unfair. Why would Eidos take issue with a review that awards their game a score only marginally lower than what they're getting from all the other game review sites? They don't like the tone of it? What kind of reason is that? Mobygames reviewers: how would you feel if one of your reviews was rejected because the approver decides he doesn't like the tone of it?




Good question. Maybe they just got pissed off and decided to punish Gamespot in any way they could. Lawsuit mentality.

how would you feel if one of your reviews was rejected because the approver decides he doesn't like the tone of it?

That happens all the time when reviews are called descriptions 8)

It has happened to me.

what's funny is that, as has been touched upon already, this sort of thing happens a lot in NEWSPAPERS (and tv news and news in general). it can be impossible to even write an article if it goes against a major advertiser. i remember a pbs show that detailed how our news is routinely censored in this way, including a segment about pbs shows being censored! XD

frankly, i've always taken game reviews in major publications w/ a grain of salt. most of them sound biased to begin w/, some even sound just like an ad (*cough*nintendopower*cough*). i think the only things that help me decide if i might like or dislike a game are screenshots and a description of what you do in the game.

Okay, maybe that was a bad example, but still...

Not because of advertiser pressure, at least. That just removed the porn from the frontpage 8)

Sean Sands at Gamers With Jobs writes a scarily plausible "memo" ostensibly from a review site's management to it's reviewers. Cynical!

Perhaps it's time for a review-based sequel to Kloonigames' The Truth About Game Development.

In all fairness, when I'm writing for publication, I prefer to give high reviews than low reviews because it's constructive -- why not give someone deserving a boost with your limited column inches rather than do no one any good by tearing something down? If I haven't got much nice to say about something I prefer to just find some other subject I can be more complementary about. Let it be my silence that is damning! And it will be the advertising section that looks foolish when the crappy product they have allowed to skin the publication turns out to be a big stinker.

The only part of this debacle, that surprises me is, that this is getting so much attention. I know that this can not be the first time that a game critic has lost a job over disliking a game. Particuraly a game whose publisher was paying big bucks to promote.

His "tone" may have been negative, but then again he has never liked that many games.

Call me cynical, but I have always suspected as much.

That would explain why so many overhyped games recive perfect of near perfect scores. I.e. Halo 2, Lord Of The Rings: The Third Age, etc.

And I do agree that game critics actually should offer constructive critisim instead of nitpicking and making a big deal out of minor game problems.

I no longer even heed, the reviews of "professionals". I would rather rely on people that actually play games, that is why I come to this site often.

"...I am alive, and you are dead."-Ubik, Phillip K. Dick

Well, I don't believe that all this games are hyped because of some advertisers. I'm not a fan of those games either, but sure a lot of people enjoy them. It's no secret, that gaming becomes more and more mainstream. And I think a whole lot of people want games with impressing graphics, a big movie-license and no thinking involved - just like "Lord of the Rings". As a professional reviewer, you always write for an audience, and that audience does't only consist of gamers like ourselves...