Spontaneous Monotony

When one of their longtime editors was fired after giving a prime advertiser’s game a mediocre review score, fans deserted Gamespot in droves. Now there’s been another screwup - not on the same scale, but still showing the complete lack of professionalism at the site critics christened ‘ca$hwh0re’. Lost Odyssey, which coincidentally does not have any advertising on Gamespot, was slaughtered in their review for ‘loading times exceeding 60 seconds’ (I paraphrase).

Now that the game’s out (in the US at least) many users are posting on Gamespot’s forums pointing out that the loading times are perfectly fine - about 10 seconds being the longest, typical of any 360 game. Gamespot have claimed that the discs Microsoft gave them are different from the retail copies, but to be honest that in itself is stunningly poor form on Gamespot’s part. They should have made sure that the game had begun pressing for retail distribution - and that their copy was retail equivalent - before they even wrote the damn thing.

For a long time Gamespot has been one of the web’s most trusted sources of reviews. CNET’s corporate management have managed to destroy that reputation - built up over years - in a matter of days. There are two things that we know for certain - Gamespot editor Jeff Gertsmann recently gave a negative review to the new Kane and Lynch game. He was then fired. Now the rumour which has caught on is that the two were linked - that Gerstmann was fired after Eidos threatened to cancel advertising campaigns on CNET’s sites.

Of course, this leaves many people in search of a review site which still has some integrity left. One I’ve seen mentioned in a few places is 1UP - if anyone has any other Corruptspot alternatives then post a comment here and I’ll add them to the list.

Of course, that has not been confirmed (and given the confidentiality rules surrounding employment it is pretty difficult to do so), but the response of CNET staff has been as good as in many people’s eyes. Instead of giving the company’s side of the story, CNET’s moderators are closing any forum posts (often including abusive comments in their reply) which question the company’s conduct. One of the few surviving complaint threads is (at the time of writing) 1096 pages long. Not posts, PAGES! Given the level of aggro this is causing, I suspect that the costs in terms of lost credibility (not to mention loss of a great many paying subscribers, myself included) are far higher than whatever the value of the Eidos advertising was.