PS3 Poll Police: Scandal at the Gamespot!
by Nick Doerr 
{ Dec 2nd 2007 at 6:00PM }
In light of recent events, the Poll Police are scrounging up every resource they have to scramble to the streets and get your thoughts on the conundrum that befell Gamespot. If you are unaware of the scenario, read up on it here, or listen to a very short version by us. Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot for a ton of rumored reasons, the most prominent being a negative review of Kane & Lynch, which caused Eidos to pull out all the advertising revenue from the site. Advertising pressure to give a game a positive score, mostly. Anyhow, we'd like to gauge your thoughts on the situation: is there more than meets the eye, or is this all there was to it? Is it fair or not?
Whatever the decision, we can't reverse what's happened. A lot of Sony fanboys criticized Gamespot for having a glaring anti-PS3 bias in their reviews, which may or may not be substantiated by equally questionable pressure from "advertisers" or "sponsors" or whoever. If this is part of a restructuring for Gamespot in their practices, and letting Jeff go was the first step in getting the site back in order, that's a different story. However, the world is a shady place and the lack of solid information in this event makes us wonder what the scoop really is. Last week's poll results are after the jump.
How about that. We've got about half of you saying that over the Eat Lots of Food holiday, PS3's were getting sold fairly well. A quarter of you saw nothing out of the ordinary or even saw returns of PS3's. Really? We don't buy it, though we're logical in thinking "who the hell would return something on Black Friday?" What's nice to see is that about the last quarter of you (give or take a bit, we're rounding up) are readers from out of the country. It's great to know our readership extends this far, as it didn't just a year ago. Not relevant to the poll, but still good to know our site is on your mind! Thanks for voting!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andy @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:10PM
Just wondering. But would you guys review a game better if they advertise a lot on this site?
I really hope they had a better reason than that for firing him. But in the end that site is there to make money, and if giving advertised games better scores makes money than why not.
I love to read reviews but like most people I take them with a grain of salt. You never know what factors made them review it the way they do. For example if a reviewer was having a bad day the game might score lower. Or if they had played similar games before they reviewed it they might bore of it quicker.
frankym @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:15PM
Gamespot seems like a very tough place to get a good review especially if it is a PS3 exclusive.
Take Assasin's Creed.....not the greatest game..boring and repetitve yet it got a 9.0 along with editors choice...if you read the review you will realize it is pure horseshit. AC also had almost all of its advertising budget with GS.
dewmandew7 @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:18PM
This is a shame. I saw this a few days ago. I regular Gamespot and I have a blog there:
http://www.gamespot.com/users/dewmandew7/?tag=login;profile
It is sad to see them do something so boneheaded. However, with the less than acceptable reviews of Ratchet and Clank and Uncharted (both under-rated by at least 1.0) and their money whoring.
Examples of them thinking with their wallets include both this and them granting the Golden Compass game a Launch Center (http://www.gamespot.com/users/dewmandew7/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=m-100-25221314). There was probably some sort of financial transaction involved and it was inspired in no way by any sort of hype, which is how the Launch Centers SHOULD be given.
Dru @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:30PM
Sucks that a guy got fired and another quit (in what appeared to be solidarity), but something seems fishy here. I read somewhere that the review was done and it was worked out with Eidos two weeks ago. Doesn't explain why they "allegedly" pulled their advertising. Could it have been that the advert run was over? With no real comments from either side I guess we'll never know unless someone breaks the silence.
frankym @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:39PM
Gamespot's reviews are driven by financial compensation....the website is a scam.
Service_Games @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:45PM
Thing is, it doesn't matter what really happened anymore. The majority of gamers think that Gerstmann's dismissal was wrongful. GameSpot could come up with irrefutable proof that they had good reason to fire Gerstmann, but it wouldn't matter. Perception is reality. The majority believe that he was let go because of the review. That's all that matters anymore. Unfortuantely or fortunately (however you see it), GameSpot has lost a large part of their credibility amongst the gaming community even if they were in the right.
I honestly don't know what to believe, but again, that doesn't matter anymore.
SG
Logan @ Dec 3rd 2007 7:03AM
i don't think anything more true could be said about the situation.
leighmail @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:48PM
They wouldn't have PULLED funding if the advert run was over, the money just would have dried up, or their contract would have run out and it wouldn't have been blown out of proportion like this. The fact that no-one is commenting on anything (Eidos haven't commented on why they pulled the funding, and Gamespot haven't commented on the actual reason he was fired, I don't think they ever will, it would be slander if they called him incompetent or he said he was stealing office supplies or something) makes it look a bit suspicious, but it's not uncommon for corporations to not comment on their business, and as consumers all we can do is either trust or boycott Gamespot, and considering how many other reviewers there are out there, this might end up pretty bad for Gamespot. As far as it goes you can't really TRUST any reviewer, they're all biased in some way, not everyone is going to like every style of game, and like Andy said, they might just be having a bad day, but these fiascos just make them look bad.
JKPierce @ Dec 2nd 2007 6:54PM
GamePolitics' coverage of this, as always, has been great. I suggest reading up on it.
MetaGeek @ Dec 2nd 2007 7:34PM
The guy who was fired for his low-scoring review is the exact SAME guy who gave Ratchet and Clank a 7.5 because it played "a lot like the other games". The guy was an ass of a reviewer. While I dislike and don't condone the reason for his dismissal, I'm at least glad he's gone, so he and his "nothing pleases me" attitude can't shit up any more games deserving of proper scores.
dewmandew7 @ Dec 2nd 2007 8:27PM
No it wasn't. Aaron Thomas reviewed Ratchet and Clank.
subversive1 @ Dec 2nd 2007 9:20PM
Kane & Lynch sucked.The online play was horrid.Screw Gamespot if they can't handle facts.
Hashbrown_Hunter @ Dec 2nd 2007 9:08PM
It's a sad day for everyone when you see something like this happen.
It just shows that at the end of the day, most companies just care about one thing: money.
HAAS599 @ Dec 2nd 2007 9:13PM
Gamespot does short change PS3 games.
The review on Kane & Lynch may have been just, but I think this is karma coming around and biting them in the @$$ for all the anti-sony stuff that has been slowly but surely taking over the site.
Jeff seems cool and may be very popular and have a lot of friends, but much like politically biased people shouldn't be writing and editing our news, if you want to have a respectible site site you can't have a fanboy in charge.
bs6268d @ Dec 2nd 2007 9:17PM
I agree with number 12. 95% of the time it was about the money
KillarClown @ Dec 2nd 2007 9:26PM
he spat when he should have swallowed.. simple as that
HAAS599 @ Dec 2nd 2007 9:37PM
if it was an xbox exclusive would he have swallowed?
Imperitor @ Dec 2nd 2007 10:22PM
It sounds like they fired him for a reason they don't want anyone to know, even the employees at gamespot. Even if they fired him for something other then his bad review (which I think was an accurate rating of the game) they did it all wrong. I stopped going to gamespot about a year ago because I started disagreeing with there reviews but I'd like to boycott all cnet sites now. Too bad, because they own a lot of them.
Efeez1986 @ Dec 2nd 2007 10:36PM
I don't understand people here in America. This is the only country that has all this anti playstation BS going on. Playstation 3 is the most incredible system i have ever owned. If it wasn't for the Playstation brand, a lot of people probably wouldn't even be into video games, and xbox wouldn't exist, so show some respect. Everything about the Playstation 3 is amazing, especially the six axis. I honestly like the six axis better than Wii motion controls, because the PS3 controller combines a traditional controller w/ the motion sensing as an added bonus, so you get the best of both worlds. Plus the Playstation brand exclusives are 2nd to none. Microsoft has been throwing their money around buying every exclusive they can, and PS3 still has better exclusives. So what does that tell you?
Popfrogs @ Dec 2nd 2007 11:52PM
Well, to be fair, Sony has also been snatching up exclusives, but not by padding the wallets of developers. They've been buying up the devs lock, stock and barrel. They have a gigantic first-party presence now with in-house studios like Insomniac, Incognito, Polyphony Digital, Zipper Interactive, Guerrilla Games, etc.
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't done the same, but the shops they've dealt with (Epic, Activision, EA), it takes a whole lot more cash to put them on your roster for life. With a $1 billion loss and counting, MS needs to start turning a dollar instead of blowing more.
JKPierce @ Dec 3rd 2007 6:57AM
The 'billion' loss is just for their warranty issues (which itself was closer to two). Their entertainment division loses millions every year, and has yet to turn a dime of profit. As long as their software keeps making billions, though, they'll keep throwing money at it--apparently.
How they pitch that to investors is beyond me.
Michael K. @ Dec 3rd 2007 8:42AM
This is why video games aren't taken seriously, reviews are bought and sold
farfisa @ Dec 3rd 2007 10:36AM
I find a lot of game reviews to be pretty sarcastic and negative--I didn't manage to see the K&L video review that was the subject of so much controversy, but I've read some pretty funny reviews of bad games I'd never be interested in just for entertainment value. Sometimes reading a bad review is (unfortunately) more fun than playing the game.
However, when a review site becomes increasingly negative, I can understand how they might want to turn it around. But man, did they ever handle it badly!
Popfrogs @ Dec 3rd 2007 12:53PM
That's why guys like Yahtzee do what they do. People want a negative review to be hilarious, and a positive one to be dead on accurate. The problem is, unless the guy has been around for a long time, and you've agreed with most of his recommendations, you can't really judge any reviewer's opinion well. The shameful thing here is that the editor in question has been doing reviews for ~10 years, which is 100 in internet years.
echo @ Dec 4th 2007 12:50AM
Thought I might throw my opinion into the ring. I recently wrote about this incident at my entertainment blog http://www.staticechoes.blogspot.com
I'd love to hear what you guys have to say in response.