Gamespot Opens Up About The Gerstmann Firing
Gamespot has broken their silence on exactly why they fired Jeff Gerstmann. After days of the silent treatment in the face of lots or rumour and public frustration from all corners of the web, Tor Thorsen has answered some of the burning questions people have been posing as to why Jeff was fired. Here are some of the more salient answers:
Q: Why was Jeff fired?A: Legally, the exact reasons behind his dismissal cannot be revealed. However, they stemmed from issues unrelated to any publisher or advertiser; his departure was due purely for internal reasons.
Q: Why was the Kane & Lynch review text altered?
A: Jeff's supervisors and select members of the edit team felt the review's negativity did not match its "fair" 6.0 rating. The copy was adjusted several days after its publication so that it better meshed with its score, which remained unchanged. The achievements and demerits it received were also left unaltered. Additionally, clarifications were made concerning the game's multiplayer mode and to include differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game.
Q: Did Eidos' disappointment cause Jeff to be terminated?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: Did Eidos' disappointment cause the alteration of the review text?
A: Absolutely not.
Q: Did Eidos' disappointment lead to the video review being pulled down?
A: Absolutely not.
And so on... They've made their point, the question is, will people believe them? With any issue like this, there are always going to be conspiracy theorists who never believe the official story. However, they've lost a lot of goodwill from a community that is outraged, (and rightfully so), at the prospect of journalism for advertisings sake.
Regardless of which side people take, it seems to me that this does give a good example for how NOT to react to a controversy like this. I have a feeling they would have had an easier time if they'd answered these questions a few days earlier, or at least told readers that they would have answers for them soon.
Read the full Q&A and let us know your opinion on the issue. As always, we wish the best to Jeff in his job hunt.
Spot On: GameSpot on Gerstmann [Gamespot]
[via: Joystiq]
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 5 December 2007
· Comments (10)
Other stuff like this: Fired, Gamespot, Journalistic Integrity
Yeah, that is the official story. But only an idiot believes the official story.
- I agree
- You're overreacting
- Cut the chatter!
They still have a lot of convincing left to do.
The fact that it took them this long to explain this doesn't bode well, either.
It's one of those "If you did nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide" kind of things. It just seemed all to convenent. If it wasn't because of that they should have said that once the question was asked, not a week later when their PR team was able to tell them what they should say.
P.S. The Holocaust never happened
Even if this story is the truth, altering the text of a review to match the score is asinine. Anyone who knows shit about reviewing knows the text is the important part and the score is a crude summary of sorts.
I'm not buying it. The chances are something being hidden from the reader is very likely and I doubt we'll ever find out. But if gamespot really wanted to clear the air, they would remove legal restrictions and NDAs concerning the issue to let Jeff speak freely on the subject. For better and worse, people are going to believe his word over a faceless, impersonal and uninformative article. Not that I've visited the site in ages, I'm not motivated to go back anytime soon.
I may disagree about the idea that the score is the least important part of a review nowadays, especially when it comes to video games—in the age of Metacritic and Game Rankings, to the majority the numerical score is the only thing that matters.
Q: Why wasn't the video immediately reposted?
A: Due to the crush of high-profile games being released the following week, there were insufficient resources to reshoot and re-edit the video review.
....so it's better to have a faulty/inferior video review posted than nothing at all? (+1 for integrity for quality!)
i don't think ex-fans of Gamespot would ever be happy until Jeff explained the whole thing in person and have some of the staff start providing more details as to who made the decision to fire Jeff....because after all this, we still don't know why he got fired.
the podcast revealed little and everyone was being very cautious of not mentioning names from upper management.
also note this part: "GameSpot News has been provided the following answers by **management** to the questions below"
i'm not sure what strange parallel universe everyone else seems to be living in where corporation go around commenting in the media about why so-and-so got fired. this is pretty stand corporate policy. when you start giving specific reasons as to why ONE person got fired you invited lawsuits from ANYONE who EVER got fired from your company.
i think it's very clear what happened. a supervising editor didn't like the review as is and wanted to make some changes to the text. jeff didn't like that. jeff got fired. seems like management fucked up on the way the handled it but all this rampant rumor mongering is ridiculous.
and a lot of people are commenting on jeff silence. there might be a NDA and their pro'bly is, but did ANYONE consider for even a SECOND that maybe jeff knows he fucked up and is just trying to cover his own ass?
stop reading valleywag
I'd just like to point out Kamilumin's awesome Mass Effect joke.
Also, I'm with everyone else who doesn't buy this. That's a legal answer, which is usually the exact opposite of transparency.