Rumour: Gamespot editor fired over a negative review

[Update] - Gamespot's owner company, CNET, has released an official comment which states, "we [at CNET] stand behind the editorial content that our teams produce on a daily basis." For the full story follow this link to Joystiq.

Since news has spread of the firing of Jeff Gerstmann, an editor and senior game reviewer for Gamespot.com, most of the game journalism world has been flipped upside-down. Recent updates have stated that Gerstmann's termination was confirmed and the reason for his termination still a mystery, but rumours are spreading.

According to Kotaku.com, the rumour heard is as follows:

According to the source, Gerstmann was fired "on the spot" due to advertiser pressure for his [6.0 out of 10] 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."

Now that the situation has been explained, a media outlet should always be objective and never -- I repeat -- NEVER should it give in to advertisers or put it's journalists on the chopping block. While searching other sites I read comments from readers that were never fans of Jeff due to his allegedly bad reviews, most noticeably the disagreement to his 8.8 review score of Wii's Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

In all honesty, I agree with the 8.8 score for Twilight Princess. The game did nothing to revolutionize the franchise and I still believe it was little more than a cleaner Ocarina of Time. Some fans of the game believed that the review was poorly executed and should have deserved a near-perfect score. There was even demands that the game be reviewed a second time by another reviewer, but Gamespot stood by Jeff's decision without fail ... until now.

My respect for Gamespot has been destroyed, not once did I think that they would buckle to an advertiser. Guess we were proven wrong and that's a damn shame.

- R