he outrage over the dismissal of Gamespot's former editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann now seems to be impacting Gamespot from the other end of the business plan. Not the advertising channels, but you know, the part of the plan where people come and actually pay for memberships.... and read stuff. According to a forum thread on their site, more than 400 of Gamespot's paid subscribers have already cancelled their subscriptions in direct protest of the move, with many more vowing to do so if Gamespot and parent company CNET do not answer up to the fairly heavy charges of putting advertising dollars ahead of editorial integrity.
Our community has reacted quite charasmatically to the reports. Here are a few of my personal favorites.
AriesDog: Loonnngggg time reader of Gamespot.com but Jeff Gerstmann's firing makes me wary of Gamespot's reviews if the advertiser pays enough. Sorry, going to EGM and 1up.com exclusively for reviews after this.
VenemousDuck: So many review sites have their pockets filled with money from game publishers that it was only a matter of time. It's not like losing ads from Eidos would have bankrupted Gamespot.
Chrispenny: I'll never go to Gamespot for another review again.
Sharde: I'm not sure I'm ready to jump off the bandwagon quite yet. Their reviews in the past have been spot on. If that changes going forward, I'll unsubscribe and find another site... but do you really think with an press nightmare like this happening they're going to risk messing up future reviews with ad profits?
While we might not all agree on the validity of these pretty serious allegations, one thing is for sure. Gamespot has probably never seen a day like this before. Guilty or not, I think they learned a big lesson.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/index.php/2007/11/gamespot-readers-push-back.html
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