There must be more to Gerstmann “firing”, says EGM editor

EGM editor Dan Hsu (who recently spoke out about untoward treatment towards his magazine from Ubisoft, “Sony’s sport department” and Midway) has reached the common sense conclusion that there was more to the Jeff Gerstmann “sacking” from Gamespot than meets the eye.

“I’d be really surprised if what everyone thinks happened really happened,” he said, speaking in a GameTrailers Bonus Round interview (see below). “Because Eidos complaining happens all the time. That’s pretty normal… If they threaten to pull advertising, then it’s Gamespot’s duty for management to protect its employees and defend its editorial integrity. Jeff Gerstmann’s been there for so long, I find it really hard to believe that even if there’s new management… that it’s like, ‘You’re gone,’ and not think about all the ramifications of how’s it going to affect morale, how’s it going to affect how we look to our readers and our editorial integrity; there’s a lot of consequences from that. So I kind of feel there must be more to the story that we’re not hearing.”

Gerstmann left Gamespot last November, apparently due to friction over a 6/10 score for Eidos’s Kane & Lynch and the publisher’s subsequent threat to pull a large advertising campaign.

“The buzz seems to imply that he got fired for a negative review, but I don’t know,” said Hsu. “Maybe he was sleeping with the boss’s wife, or something… I think very few people know the full story.”