GameSpot's Gerstmann Caned and Lynched?

This story may become a very interesting one. Jeff Gerstmann, a long time editor at CNET's popular gaming portal website GameSpot, was fired Wednesday. Current interweb speculation revolves around a connection with his recent less-than-glowing review of the game Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.

The game's publisher Eidos had been advertising the game very heavily on GameSpot over the last few weeks, so industry watchers are wondering how much Eidos' influence as an important advertiser factored into CNET's decision to let Gerstmann go. Obviously, questions are immediately raised regarding the journalistic integrity of this trusted game review site. Thing is, Gerstmann had given the game a score of 6.0, which is not a great deviation from the overall Metacritic score of 68%.

Gerstmann's video review of the game was also pulled from GameSpot at some point, but has been posted on YouTube. To be fair to GameSpot, it is not his best work at all.

I know that GameSpot is certainly high on my list of information sources, and as a result I will be watching developments very closely. Check out posts on Kotaku, Achievement Junkie, Wired's GameLife blog, and Penny Arcade's scathing commentary for some more angles.