Gerstmanngate Comes Full Circle

It was a cold day in Philadelphia when the news hit that Jeff Gerstmann had gotten the sack. I was a younger man then, turning the rambunctious age of 23, and things were simpler. There were hundreds of AAA games being released simultaneously and all the little gamers were abuzz about Mountain Dew Game Fuel. (you'll find it under the 'variants' subheading -- how tasty sounding.) Alright, it was only five months ago or so, but it did happen on my birthday (coincidentally also the best day of the whole year, ever.)

Well today, we're receiving news that the man potentially responsible for Senor Gerstmann's sacking has been sacked. Vice President of Games at CNet, GameSpot's parent company, Josh Larson will be leaving/is being forced out under these terms, "[a] new management structure means that Josh Larson's position as VP, Games is being eliminated and Josh will be leaving the company."

According to a posting at Gawker Media outlet Valleywag (parent and sister site to Kotaku, respectively) by an unspecified alleged GameSpot employee (posting under the dubious name 'gamespot'), "Our last executive editor, Greg Kasavin, left to go to EA, and he was replaced by a suit, Josh Larson, who had no editorial experience and was only involved on the business side of things. Over the last year there has been an increasing amount of pressure to allow the advertising teams to have more of a say in the editorial process; we've started having to give our sales team heads-ups when a game is getting a low score, for instance, so that they can let the advertisers know that before a review goes up."

And it just gets worse from there. Here's hoping that if Larson was the man responsible for the firing of our favorite HotSpot member, he's at least getting kicked in the crotch once or twice. Oh, and just in case you forgot, here's what Gerstmann (among other ex-GameSpotters) are doing with their time now.