3. Gamespot Fires Jeff Gerstmann For Panning Kane And Lynch
Another dark day for games journalism occurred after Gamespot's esteemed reviewer Jeff Gerstmann gave Kane and Lynch a pretty generous review score of 6/10, and though for a movie review that score would indicate a pretty average three-star flick, for video games, anything under a 7 is basically a death knell due to their bizarre, skewed standards of video game quality (in game journalism, most outlets give a 7/10 to what should be a 5/10). Gerstmann was promptly dismissed from his position as Editorial Director, reportedly due to Eidos (the publisher of Kane and Lynch), who were paying Gamespot a wealth of ad revenue, putting pressure on the company to do so following the negative review. Gamespot's reputation was subsequently damaged beyond repair, and now the company struggles to even get a hold of review code for some games; I mean, who even visits their site anymore? Gerstmann went on to create the hugely successful website Giant Bomb, though the scandal still makes us wonder how many review scores for the site (and other sites) were altered for the sake of advertising revenue.