So, Gamespot's cred is in the shitter. This is news?

All these ominous posts about Eidos "threatening" to withdraw advertising in light of the negative review overcomplicate a really simple situation. Let me break it down for the conspiracy theorists:

1. Eidos signs advertising contract with Gamespot for game X.

2. Gamespot subsequently posts negative review of game X.

3. Eidos folks notice negative review and think, "well, it does not really make sense to spend money on advertising at this site if our product is being slammed by their reviewers. Oh well, we got a few ad clicks out of them, let's move on."

4. The end.

On the subject of game reviewers, does anyone else enjoy Zero Punctuation? :)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctu...

Oh, oh...;) The rumor mill winds up yet again, reaching new heights of mania...! Another rumor echoed around the world until it reaches levels of credibility undreamed of by its authors. Thanks for illustrating yet another of the Internet's greatest abuses and misuses...misinformation, misdirection, and rumor.

Am I the only one today who has noticed that although Gertsmann has apparently been fired from GameSpot, not only has he personally failed to attribute that firing to anything relating to this review, but also that the review which is rumored to be the cause of his firing is still up on Gamespot?

Now, it would seem rather useless of GameSpot managers to fire Gertsmann exclusively because Eidos objected to the content of his review unless GameSpot also removed the offending review, wouldn't it? In fact, I would imagine that if the rumor concerning Eidos is true, that Eidos would much rather have seen GameSpot fire the review, than to have GameSpot fire Gertsmann while leaving his review up and in full public view. Yes, that would make tons more sense than to imagine that Eidos would have "threatened to yank its ad campaign" unless GameSpot fired Gertsmann without...what?
Without also...removing...the...offending...review... IE, if the review was the issue then surely Eidos would have insisted on it being pulled because just firing Gertsmann alone would have provided Eidos with absolutely no relief of any kind.

Also, not only is the review still up, but this rumor has probably increased the number of people who have read it by a factor of at least 10x the number who would have read it otherwise. And it isn't apparent to me that Eidos has pulled anything off of GameStop as a result of this review. So....the evidence would seem to clearly indicate that this review and the firing of Gertsmann are completely unrelated--and it isn't apparent that Eidos has in any way benefited by what has transpired, which is the firing of Gertsmann while leaving his review intact and on site.

Surely, I cannot be the only one to have noticed this today?

I'm not surprised one tiny bit... And it only reassures my suspicions about how Halo 3 got those rave reviews and retarderdly high scores...

The fact that Eidos pulled their ad campaign might be a clue.
I submit that someone had to take the heat for the lost revenue,
and some clueless upper management jerk fired Gertsmann instead of punishing him in some less embarrassing way.
Hell, it may even have been a "lose us money and you're toast" kind of deal.
Who can know?

Firing a guy for his review is a blatant disregard to keeping some form of credibility for Gamespot.

Having said that, why couldn't the score be kept AND have the review edited to help please the advertiser (something that could easily have been done before the editor was fired)?

I'm not saying give it one hell of a glowing review and still give it a 6.X, but maybe focus on some of the "good" and less of the "bad", while maintaining critical of what flaws the title.

There goes Gamespot's credibility.

Edit: Nevermind.

So who is the bigger jackass: Eidos for 'enforcing' 'independent' reviews, or Gamespot for fully admitting they are sellouts?

This is a sad day for the gaming community. Gaming has become bigger than movies and now the corporations sway what you should play.

OMG YES! I hate Jeff Gerstmann, I hate his overlay negative reviews that just ignore every single good thing about a game. Most people on gamespot hate him, there was an entire uproar over his Zelda Twilight review where he acts like a huge ass. He chose to focus on all the negatives of that game, brought up only 2 good things about it while there are 1000s of good points to make.

Ironically his kane & lynch review wasn't that negative, haha. But I'm glad he's gone.

gayspot? i thought they went out of business a long time ago! i remember nothing but the ads and popups from that cr@p site. ActionTrip is where its at!

Gamespot lost all respect on October 29th when they LIED by claiming to have perfect SLI results on the Crysis demo with the 169.01 drivers. Some how James Yu at Gamespot got nearly perfect scaling while not one other reviewer could even get SLI to work at all. Nvidia themselves even said that SLI did NOT work in the Crysis demo with the 169.01drivers. That site is just BS.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6181908/index.html?tag=result;title;0

Something to keep that in mind when hearing about a gamespot review. Apparently their work has to be taken with a grain of salt if this is true.

Corporate profit over reporting integrity, might as well skip them and go watch the ads directly.

This is the review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FuJ81sDR2o

I might as well rent it to try the multiplayer.

Yeah I think there's more to it than him just posting a negative review. It's not like they haven't torn apart games before. I bet there's some behind the scenes friction with management going on here.... Maybe he's a jackass. Heh.

Stuff like this is bound to happen though. They are walking a fine line over there, being a company based primarily on advertising and yet offering critical reviews of the products they advertise...... Hell, almost every review site is walking that line. Gamespot went a bit overboard with their advertising though. Risky stuff that is.

i've now canceled my paid subscription to gamespot. i always saw the site as the most credible source for reviews. not anymore. i call to everyone to do the same. posting in the forums is all fine. but hurting gamespot'spockets is the best way

So the real news is that there's an opening for someone willing to take a little payola on game reviews? Where do I send my resume?

Hence why I stopped reading reviews from large websites a long time ago.

Gamespot sucks.

Money makes the world go 'round.