A couple days ago I downloaded the latest HotSpot podcast from Gamespot.com and was a bit surprised to not here the voice of Jeff Gerstmann who has been a constants part of the podcast.  At the time I just assumed he was on vacation or taking some time away.  Well late last night I was disappointed to hear that Jeff Gerstmann was recently let go from Gamespot.  The rumor seems to be that it is because of his review of the Eidos title Kane & Lynchead Men.  Jeff was a very funny member of the HotSpot podcast and a very good source for games that would help you pad your gamer score. 

If this rumor is true that Gerstmann was fired over the tone of this review it is a dark day for game journalism.  Before this incident the GameSpot site had been littered with Kane & Lynch ads which are all gone now.  The video review by Gerstmann was a bit harsh and it really made it know that this game should be avoided even though the game's score was a 6/10 which equated to Fair on their review scale.  Gerstmann was the editorial director at Gamespot and had been with the gaming site for 10 years.  C-Net owns GameSpot.com so it can assumed that they had a large part in the decision to let Gerstmann go. 

I never was very interested in the Kane & Lynch game because it looked questionable to me.  It has gotten fairly average reviews across the board.  I can only guess it was more an issue with the content of the video review that lambasted the game.  We may never know exactly what happened but we do know that a larger publisher pulled their ads and Gamespot's editorial director was let go.

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/30/rumor-gamespots-editorial-director-fired-over-kane-and-lynch-rev/