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At long last, GameSpot has issued a full Q&A regarding Jeff Gerstmann's firing and the swarms of conspiracy-theory rumors surrounding it, his Kane & Lynch review, the many edits to it, Eidos's reaction to it, and what really motivated the firing.

Unlike the last statement, this post contains significantly less legal stonewalling and seeming coverup.

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: Why was the Kane & Lynch video review taken down?

A: Both the text and video reviews of Kane & Lynch went up on Tuesday, November 13. The morning of Wednesday, November 14, the video was taken down due to concerns of quality. Specifically, its audio was deemed inferior due to a faulty microphone. There were also concerns about the limited amount of footage, which was unrepresentative of the game in the review.

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.

And...

A: It has been confirmed that Eidos representatives expressed their displeasure to their appropriate contacts at GameSpot, but not to editorial directly. It was not the first time a publisher has voiced disappointment with a game review, and it won't be the last. However, it is strict GameSpot policy never to let any such feelings result in a review score to be altered or a video review to be pulled.

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.

Q: Why was GameSpot "skinned" with Kane & Lynch ads when Jeff was terminated?

A: Due to design and development considerations, media buys on GameSpot are made weeks in advance. The timing of said ads was extremely unfortunate but was purely coincidental and determined solely by the game's release date of November 13, 2007.

It seems like a rather thorough squelching of the fires. It was just a fantastic series of coincidences all happening at just the right time in just the right order to completely throw several companies' credibility into question. Happens all the time.

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We all knew that shortly after Jeff Gerstmann was fired from GameSpot, some changes were made to his Kane & Lynch review. What we didn't know was how extensive those changes were.

Going off of a Google cache of an EB Games page that featured the original review, Joystiq was able to piece together all of the edits made to the original version.

Basically, it was heavily toned down in attitude. The wording of several complaints goes from active to passive neutral, such as the line:


...being changed to...

And...


...to...



The whole thing seems watered down to remove some of the "bite." It makes you wonder, if GameSpot actually had a problem with it, wouldn't they have changed these things during the pre-publishing process where nearly everybody on the review team looks over and makes changes to a review? The fact that the changes were made after publishing makes it seem like the changes were done at the request of an outside party.

If Jeff was fired for submitting an angrily-worded review instead of a nice, casual, everbody's-a-winner one, the review either wouldn't have been published or the changes would have been made before publishing. Making the changes after publishing means somebody saw it and decided it needed to be changed, be them from CNet management, a GameSpot manager who didn't see the review pre-publication, or someone from some outside party like a game developer or something.

The full body of the review with modifications highlighted by Joystiq is included after the jump.

Continue reading...

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While gamers and gaming journalists everywhere are currently in an uproar regarding GameSpot's firing of Jeff Gerstmann over a poor review score for Eidos Interactive's Kane & Lynch: Dead Men (you can check out our own review here), what's interesting is that Eidos itself has refrained from commenting on the K&L fiasco.

In particular, the company's blatant graphical lie about the game's review scores, which we noticed were preview quotes paired with star rankings that didn't exist (GameSpy was recorded as having given the title a five star rating when the actual review issued three stars; similarily, Game Informer was recorded as issuing a five star rating when it scored the title a 7/10, which is funny because Game Informer doesn't even use a star system).

While Eidos Interactive has remained quiet on the issue, the company's PR trolls have been hard at work handling the damage control on various Kane & Lynch "fan" sites, including this one, which contains a post in which an "Eidos Official" comments that, indeed, those cheeky five stars weren't meant to be viewed as scores because obviously it's common practice to issue star ratings for game previews. Here's the full quote:


In the words of our own Aaron Dunlap, who broke the original story, "Silly us for thinking that a star near a review had something to do with reviews giving stars."

What's infuriating about this "graphical misrepresentation" of game scores that don't exist is that Eidos would "forget" to remove the intentionally misleading star graphics and then explain away the fans' negative reaction to being outright lied to as simple Eidos bashing - "bashing" Eidos apparently being the hip thing to do.

What's even more hilarious is that while the stars have since been removed from the official site's splash introduction, the site still parades preview quotes around as though they were the official "review" word on the title.

In other Eidos news, the game's official Eidos forum has been unlocked and is now available for posting. At one point an Eidos admin actually responds to a fan's statement that "they [the stars] are MEANT to be misinterpreted so that people will be misled into thinking K&L is a better game than it is and [buy] it" with:


Read: it is peachy to outright lie about your game's review scores if you can get away with labeling them as "design decisions". Thanks for the heads up, Eidos.

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Though rumors and questions have been spiraling out of control for 4 days now, including proposed boycotts of GameSpot, all of their advertisers, and Eidos, GameSpot has only now issued a statement regarding Jeff Gerstmann's departure from the company.

The article is carefully worded and includes no mention of why Jeff left, or even whether he was fired or not. Although, it does include this:


(Emphasis added.)

Greg Brannan, CNET Networks Entertainment's vice president of programming, is quoted as saying, "The accusations in the media that it has done so are unsubstantiated and untrue. Jeff's departure stemmed from internal reasons unrelated to any buyer of advertising on GameSpot."

Comments posted to the article seem to be largely of the opinion that GameSpot's statement is too little, too late. There is still the question of why Gerstmann's video review of Kane & Lynch (a game I wasn't too impressed with) was taken offline along with all Kane & Lynch advertisements immediately after Gerstmann's departure.

According to GameSpot, several staff members will be posting tributes and farewells in the coming week.

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Do a Google search for Jeff Gerstmann and you might be troubled by the automatic advertisement that appears on the right-hand side.

The link goes to an Amazon.com page at which you can subscribe to PC Gamer. It's a little funny, but I think it's slightly more pathetic. Someone lost their job. The entire game review industry is under suspicion. They want to sell magazines?

UPDATE: Using our own Google Adwords account, we sent a message to Amazon. See below:

The Amazon ad was removed soon afterwards.

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At the heart of this Jeff Gerstmann controversy is the unconfirmed notion that Eidos was upset with GameSpot's 6/10 review of the game. While we have no way of knowing if that is actually what happened, it seems that Eidos might just be completely delusional about the media reception for the game.

If you go to the official Kane & Lynch website and watch the flash intro that plays before the main content appears, you'll see two excerpts from reviews flash by with a 5-star rating for each. The problem is, those reviews did not issue a 5-star, or 100% rating.

It lists a GameSpy review with the quote, "It's the best emulation of being in the midst of a Michael Mann movie we've ever seen." This quote doesn't exist from GameSpy's review. It's pulled from some early E3 2007 coverage that would have been published at least 5 months ago. The preview issues no kind of score or rating that could be perceived as a 5-star rating.

In fact, GameSpy's actual review gave Kane & Lynch a 3-star rating. Three stars, on a 5-star scale, equates to a 60%, or 6-out-of-10 score, which is exactly what Gerstmann gave the game.

The Kane & Lynch webpage also lists a quote from Game Informer: "A mercenary, a psychopath, & a bundle of cash... what could go wrong?" and also lists it with a 5-star rating. That quote also does not appear in Game Informer's review, it seems to be pulled from an early preview. And if you guessed that Game Informer's actual review gave the game a 5-star score, you'd be both wrong and stupid. They gave it a 7/10.

It's common for game PR to include preview quotes on early advertisements, as those are the only kind of quotes available before the game's release. Never before, however, have I seen preview quotes being paraded around as reviews, and also given completely imaginary scores to boot.

Delusion. Complete delusion.

Screenshots of the website are included after the jump.

UPDATE: GameBump (that's us) gave Kane & Lynch a 1-star review. And no, it's not a joke.
UPDATE UPDATE: Apparently people are mad at Eidos because "Eidos Bashing" is the thing to do.

Continue reading...

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Several staff members from Ziff Davis Media (owners of, among other things, 1UP and EGM) put together banners and marched down the street from their San Francisco offices to CNet's office where GameSpot is based and held an impromptu support rally from the street.

This whole fiasco has really brought everybody in the gaming media together in communal outrage. I'm sure that these folks, CNet and GameSpot's largest competators, are genuinely showing support here, but the whole thing was recorded and could very well be a bit for the 1UP Show. Either way, I applaud the notion.

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If you've been following entertainment news lately you're probably aware that the Writers Guild of America (the people who write our TV shows and movies) are on strike because studio executives refuse to increase the percentages of online and DVD sales distributed to the writers.

Writers fear they are being treated unfairly, so they strike. They stop working, showing management how important they are.

If you've been following video game journalism news lately, you're probably aware that Jeff Gerstmann, an editor from GameSpot was apparently fired because Eidos put financial pressure on them of CNet, their owners, over a negative review Gerstmann gave to Kane & Lynch.

If I were a writer at GameSpot now, I would be terrified to submit any writing in fear that my job could be at stake for simply crafting an opinion: what their job requires. I couldn't do my job if it became apparent that credibility was for sale.

I'd go on strike. I'd stop submitting reviews or news. I'd stop working.

That's what I'd do, maybe it's what GameSpot writers should do.

Interesting to note, there haven't been any reviews posted at GameSpot today or yesterday. Maybe they're already refusing to submit reviews.

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According to a post by a moderator at the linked page of the GameSpot forums, if anybody at the GameSpot (not Eidos) side of this issue is to be blamed, it's CNET, not GameSpot itself. CNET handles advertising for GameSpot and all other property sites, and they handle hiring/firing.

From the thread:
This makes sense to me. CNet, as owners of GameSpot and damn near a thousand other websites, would be the ones handling HR and marketing rather than having each individual property doing it themselves; that would be redundant.

So who should we blame here? Eidos for pressuring CNet into firing Gerstmann over a bad review of a game they've been paying CNet to promote, or CNet for caving to pressure and firing a journalist for doing his job?

UPDATE: However, there would of course be people within GameSpot's management that can fire people. Complete control wouldn't be handed over to CNet.

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I'd heard that the forums over at Eidos.com were going completely crazy over the firing of GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann over a negative Kane & Lynch review so I was on my way to the site to collect some quotes or screenshots and, well, the site was down.

Needless to say, the entire internets are in an uproar over this (now confirmed) firing. Gerstmann's Wikipedia article has been locked from changes by new users due to vandalism.

If it turns out to be true that Eidos forced GameSpot to fire Gerstmann over a negative review, there will soon be unleashed a holy hellstorm of outrage that this industry has never before witnessed.

UPDATE: The GameSpot homepage now includes no mention of Kane & Lynch, but yesterday there were many images and links to the review. The GameSpot forums don't seem too pleased. This thread alone has over 4,000 replies so far.

UPDATE UPDATE: We've received word that Tim Tracey, another GameSpot employee, has left his job today. As we understand it, he left voluntarily. We can't confirm whether this is related to the Gerstmann firing. Tracey worked in the video production team for GameSpot LIVE then moved to MP3.com.

UPDATE THE THIRD: Eidos.com and Eidosinteractive.com are back online. The US Eidos forums are also back, though every forum is locked and nearly all threads related to Gerstmann have been purged. There is this one, but it ends rather tersely.

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