Because I’m waging my future on the video game industry, it’s something I like to keep an eye on from all sides. A big industry story that’s been getting a lot of attention on the net for the past two weeks has been the firing of Jeff Gerstmann, an editor at GameSpot who has worked there for over ten years. The big conspiracy, very simply, goes something like this:

1. Jeff gave a negative review to a title called Kane and Lynch.
2. The game’s publisher pulled their advertising from the site.
3. Jeff was fired for hurting the company by losing those advertising dollars.

There’s only a little circumstantial evidence that point to this being true. Chief amongst them, one of the higher ups at GameSpot is a game advertising guru, who supposedly was pushing the writers for softer critiques so that the company could maintain friendly relations with game publishers. I don’t believe what is commonly believed is true.

1. Why go after such a big fish? Jeff worked for GameSpot for over a decade. He had a very strong personality, and even developed something of a fan following. When a critic site has to respond to outside pressure, they usually maintain as much of their journalistic integrity as they can by gutting a freelancer. Nobody cares about them – they’re just random names on a page. Gerstmann was a site staple since the Nintendo 64 days.

2. If the review hurt the publisher so bad, why aren’t they pulling it? Apparently, the video review of Kane and Lynch was taken down, and the text review has been edited – but it’s still up, and the 6.0 score still stands. So, what’s up with all that? The video review was taken down due to bad production values, but the site is apparently sticking by Jeff’s final piece.

3. Gerstmann is a polarizing figure, and a bit of a d-bag in his writing. I’m guessing this is why he was really fired. By all means, good luck to him in the future, but he did have somewhat of a reputation of going harder on games than most other critics. Somewhat of a saying on the Penny Arcade forums is that, whenever a game gets reviewed by IGN before GameSpot, all you have to do to predict the GameSpot score is subtract 1.5 from the IGN score. That sort of negative attitude at the site is going to be Jeff’s legacy there, as he helped establish that.

I could be wrong, of course. Counter to my beliefs, some of Jeff’s fellow employees are anonymously telling people the real scary truth of the situation – that is, if you believe they’re actually Jeff’s fellow employees. But if I was suddenly fearing for my job and feeling like I was under the thumb of my greedy corporate boss’ boss, the last thing I’d do is start flapping my lips and attracting digg.com’s attention.

The internet can sensationalize mundane daily activities. I wouldn’t be surprised if in this situation a guy getting canned for being an ass escalated into questioning an established finger of the new media’s journalistic integrity. Whether it is true or not, the trust people had in GameSpot has been damaged, but in a few months, it’ll all blow over and nobody will remember it any more. What the industry is actually suffering from right now, is a slow news cycle.