Gamespot Writer Gets Booted for Negative Review

What have you done Gamespot!

After a less than stellar review of the new game Kane and Lynch - Deadmen, the writer of the review found himself jobless immediately following the publishing of  said review according to Primotech.  Despite the fact that his review wasn’t that far off base according Metacritic, which has it listed as 68% to his 6.0 / 10, his employer decided to bid him adios for smiting their sponsor’s product. If you go to Gamespot right now, you’ll see that the whole site is plastered in Kane and Lynch propaganda which no doubt netted the site a ton of money.  Penny Arcade even got in on the controversy with their latest comic.

As a publisher and editor, I find this rather disturbing. Gamespot is supposed to be a reputable source of game reviews, but now that this has come to light, they are also, allegedly, a source of some possibly “Advertiser Influenced” reviews. Futurelooks gets their fare share of shady requests like my early run in with Rosewill and their interesting censorship methods (which they’ve apologized for and we are now working with them on OUR TERMS) and we sometimes get odd occasional veiled bribes or promises to buy ad space. However, every time that I’ve been tempted, I remember that I have a commitment to my staff to back them up, and to my readers to make sure that we aren’t feeding them bullshit.

If Gamespot was a small, independent site, I guess it wouldn’t be such a big deal.  However, Gamespot is a CNET Networks property which makes me wonder how many sites under their corporate umbrella is corrupt.