To argue that it’s inconceivable that a marketing dept of a publisher could influence the firing of an editor is as blindly optimistic as many of the attacks have been blindly aggressive. This kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME in the industry – although IMHO not usually malicious, rather just people trying to do their own jobs as well as they can.

Recall the motto that you should never confuse “malicious intent” with “incompetence” because the symptoms of each are often identical, and the latter is far more common than the former.

Personally, I find it surprising that someone who is / has been a games industry Producer would seriously claimn they’d never seen this happen. Maybe they just never worked that closely with the publisher.

The moral of the story is, if you’re totally innocent of any wrongdoing, don’t act like Rockstar :)

The controversy could have been avoided if Jeff’s exit had been handled differently. If CNET/Gamespot had addressed Jeff’s departure as it happened and not 3 days later, I think things would be different. Apparently there are issues internally at the company related to communication as well as the staff there seems to have been blindsided by the news.

It also doesn’t help matters that the review was updated and the video review was taken down just before his exit. This was the what got the rumor mill going to begin with.

This link is unrelated to this story but there are accurate parallels in how an internet mob can form and run with an idea taking it to a very damaging conclusion.

http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/11/vigilante_justice

If anything, this whole episode has shown how a company should not handle the termination of a very visible employee.

Unless you know Gerstmann personally. Oh, then go ahead and rant.