Part of this is taken from comments and articles I've already made elsewhere, but here's a condensed version:

It's a strange situation, and we'll likely never know the truth to what actually happened.

Either way, something shady went down, whether from the business or editorial side; frankly, most readers don't like that. It's a shame business as a profit-driven machine has to be so integrated into opinions as a reader-driven machine; with sales trying to land deals with a certain publisher conflicting with editorial review scores, something is bound to go wrong.

We don't all know what is going on behind the scenes, but too many people jump to conclusions that Publisher/Developer pressure has all been a big money hat scandal. If it has been at Gamespot, then why the hostility now from Gerstmann? Several editors stated that the review has to be looked over among each other before it is published; if something was clearly wrong, it wouldn't have been published. The video review was rather slanderous, but firing him two weeks after the fact just to keep company moral up is just cold.

It's certainly not a step in the right direction from Gamespot, whether if it was the review itself that got Gerstmann canned or not. It's understandable that CNET wouldn't want to divulge details on exactly why he was fired, but the current hostility towards the site and looking forward, it's reviews on "AAA games" cannot bode well. It's a shame the rest of the editors who've done a great job so far have to clean up the mess and persevere with the usual charm. It'll be very interesting to see the future of On the Spot and The Hotspot.

I'll be sticking around, but consider my GameSpot Plus account canceled. I know Alex, Brad, Bryan, Aaron, all of the Ryans, and the rest of the crew can continue to make something great, but it's truly the end of an era, here at Gamespot. This site is a large part of what got me into writing; whether in the games industry or outside of it, and I hope it continues to excel at being one of the best sites on the net.

Gamespot needs to take a step backward and assess what really matters: the readers. Forgot ad-driven profits and focus on the readers and restoring integrity to the written review. This is what inspires us to pay the $50 or $20 for a Total Access or Plus account. Don't go out of your way for advertising dollars, make advertisers go out of their way for you.