Earlier this week Jeff Gerstmann, GameSpot’s Editorial Director, was released from his job after posting a poor review of Eidos’ Kane and Lynch on the GameSpot website.

Apparently none of Gamespot’s staff could be reached for comment (big surprise) but the parent company, CNET, issued a statement in response: “For over a decade, Gamespot and the many members of its editorial team have produced thousands of unbiased reviews that have been a valuable resource for the gaming community. At CNET Networks, we stand behind the editorial content that our teams produce on a daily basis.” Considering they just fired one of their team members for doing their job and producing an unbiased review I don’t see how they can release this comment without placing ‘just kidding’ at the end.

It has been said that Eidos had placed huge amounts of money into advertising for Kane and Lynch on the website. Look at this pic and see what happened when the ‘tone’ of the 6.0 review wasn’t changed sufficiently. This means that Gerstmann did change the review, but not the score. Not surprisingly, Eidos wouldn’t comment on the situation stating “Eidos is not able to comment on another company’s policies and procedures.”

Now it would be unfair not to mention that Gerstmann has had clashes with his bosses prior to this incident. Posting reviews for high-profile games that are lets say, less than flattering, is one of Gerstmann’s tradmarks, so to speak. Most recently he posted reviews for both Ratchet and Clank: Future Tools of Destruction (PS3) and Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) that left a bad taste in the mouths of both gamers and GameSpot advertisers. Its been hinted at that these past clashes along with this most recent with Eidos advertisers caused the loss of his position.

It has also been hinted that a change in Gamespots managment could also have been a factor. The postion of Executive Vice President of CNET has been taken over by Stephen Colvin, former President and CEO of Dennis Publishing. Dennis Publishing is the company that makes magazines Maxim, Blender and Stuff. Colvin’s job is, among other things, to oversee the growth of CNET websites, including GameSpot. On Vallywag.com a comment was posted by an alleged Gamespot insider (oooo devious) that could give some insight into this managment shift. The comment reads: “I was in the meeting where Josh Larson [Executive Editor replacement for now Electronic Arts employee Greg Kasavin] was trying to explain this firing and the guy had absolutely no response to any of the criticisms we were sending his way. He kept dodging the question, saying that there were “multiple instances of tone” in the reviews that he hadn’t been happy about, but that wasn’t Jeff’s problem since we all vet every review. He also implied that “AAA” titles deserved more attention when they were being reviewed, which sounded to all of us that he was implying that they should get higher scores, especially since those titles are usually more highly advertised on our site.”

You know, as an editor for a growing website, I hope that all the above bullshit isn’t a sign of things to come. If people want me to bend to their will and change my opinion simply because they have money, they can kiss my hairy ass.

Because it ain’t happening.