GameSpot, the CNET-owned videogame-reviews site, has officially acknowledged the canning of 11-year site veteran Jeff Gerstmann in a sappy farewell posted early this morning. The site begs off confirming whether Gerstmann's departure had anything to do with his critical review of an advertiser's game, repeating the party line that "his exit was not a result of pressure from an advertiser." CNET vice president Greg Brannan treads the same tone as CNET's official release: "Neither CNET Networks nor GameSpot has ever allowed its advertising business to affect its editorial content. The accusations in the media that it has done so are unsubstantiated and untrue. Jeff's departure stemmed from internal reasons unrelated to any buyer of advertising on GameSpot." There's a simple way to prove that, Greg: State those reasons.

If there's one lesson to be drawn from the CNET fiasco known as Gerstmangate, it's that honesty isn't always the best policy. Jeff Gerstmann's controversial departure from CNET's GameSpot, allegedly for his critical take on an advertiser's product, overshadowed another videogame industry exit. Game developer Harvey Smith, known for his role in the critically acclaimed Eidos Interactive franchise Deus Ex, has left Midway after giving what one executive referred to as his "public resignation" at the Montreal International Games Summit. Smith referred to his latest project, Blacksite: Area 51, as "fucked up" when explaining its poor reception. He said he wasn't excited about Area 51 and "with a year to go, the game was disastrously off rails." Far too honest an assessment for an industry which makes its living off fantasies.

GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann, if rumors are to be believed, may have been fired for expressing his opinion about a game heavily advertised on the CNET site. Although he's unable to comment his termination, this didn't prohibit Gerstmann from relaying his future plans to Joystiq. The top question for fans of his videogame reviews: Does Gerstmann plan to stay in the business? Here's what he said.

The chummy relationship between game-review sites and videogame publishers, the sites' primary advertisers, is drawing fresh scrutiny after the firing of GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann. Eidos, the publisher of Kane & Lynch, a videogame Gerstmann savaged in a review, is being singled out by the Internet lynch mob. Eidos had dropped a hefty sum — reportedly hundreds of thousands of dollars — to "skin," or redesign, the GameSpot site with promos for the title. Eidos has yet to make a public statement about the incident. But perhaps its marketers knew what was coming. At a preview event for the game, Eidos handed out Kane & Lynch T-shirts emblazoned with the words "I've seen the pain you've caused." After the jump, closeups of the shirt, soon to be a collector's item among Gerstmann supporters.

We've always known Natali Del Conte, the host of Podshow's TeXtra, was destined for a bigger stage. And she's found one in a new gig at CNET — in New York City. In addition to online video for CNET, she'll be making the rounds of television shows like Good Morning America to explain gadgets and websites to the masses. Broadcast television viewed by millions, not a podcast downloaded by hundreds, is still the proper ambition of anyone with killer looks and a telegenic personality. We doubt Del Conte's stay at CNET will be any longer than Soledad O"Brien's stint on The Site. Give Natali a year and she'll have pushed out notorious nobody Julia Allison as Fox TV's token brunette. Sucks for us, Natali, but hurray for you.

Commenter Bobby Bokista has pulled together a handy collection of posts by CNET GameSpot staffers upset over this week's controversial firing of 11-year reviewer Jeff Gerstmann. Executive summary: Blame the suits but don't get us fired, OK?

Remember SimCity? Remember what a joy it was to build up a fully functioning, living, breathing city, full of life and wonderment? Then, at some point down the road, after you've built up your city to the peak of its productiveness, you'd start mashing the disaster button and a wide variety of tornadoes, earthquakes, and fake Godzillas would come tromping through, laying fiery waste to every bit of what you'd worked so painstakingly to create? Yeah. It's a little bit like that. Except someone hit the disaster button for me.

Congratulations, Eidos: You're officially off the hook. Responding to rumors that CNET fired GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann for slamming a game heavily advertised on the site (check out the highlights in the above clip), spokesperson Sarah Cain told Joystiq, "We do not terminate employees based on external pressure from advertisers." We doubted that CNET would toss away its credibility so readily.

Ahh, that feels good right there. I don't think we'll be talking about this week next week. The Facebook pile-on continued. Amazon's Kindle reader suffered a surprise media backlash. I'd hoped for another bank-employee-in-tutu photo to liven things up. Instead we got Gerstmanngate. At least we still have jobs — oh wait, Valleywag party girl Megan "Leggy" McCarthy is heading to Wired. I think I'll go curl up in the tub with my INVISIBLE PUPPY. (Photo by Jason Calacanis)

We never know for sure if the commentards are who they claim to be. But one prodigious poster with the new account "gamespot" is telling what reads like a credible insider story — it's written in editor-speak — of what happened to ex-CNET GameSpot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann, supposedly fired for low-scoring an advertiser's new game. "Gamespot"'s posts are in need of a 100-word-versioning, but it's Friday so forgettabout it here's the whole thing pasted in. I've bolded the newsy parts.

Videogamers have been accusing CNET of shredding its editorial credibility by firing GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann after Eidos allegedly threatened to pull "hundreds of thousands of dollars in future advertising." That, of course, is conspiracy theory entirely typical of the blogosphere. Has anyone thought that Eidos has as much to lose as CNET here, with customers turning against the games studio over claims it muscled out a popular reviewer? We hear Eidos is "freaking out" over l'affaire Gerstmann; top management there, an insider says, sincerely believes they didn't prompt CNET to fire Gerstmann, but fears they'll get the blame anyway. Michelle Curran, Eidos's director of public relations, says, "Yeah, we're not commenting on that right now." That's all right, Michelle. If we were you, we wouldn't comment, either.

Jeff Gerstmann, the former CNET GameSpot reviewer whom the rumor mill claims was fired by CNET for angering an advertiser with a negative writeup about one of their games, responded to my Facebook poke. Besides being a journalistic first for me, Jeff's message made me laugh.

Here's a new wrinkle on the controversial firing of CNET editor Jeff Gerstmann, which came shortly after he posted a negative review of CNET advertiser Eidos's Kane & Lynch. An individual claiming to work in CNET ad sales — specifically on the Eidos ad campaign — claims that while Eidos was upset over the review, that conflict was settled over two weeks ago. He says, "I'd heard a few people tell that [Gerstmann had] already been skating on thin ice for 'unprofessional reviews and review practices.'"

The only offense we see is that his words were much harsher than his written review. Gerstmann called Kane & Lynch an "ugly, ugly game" and characterized the developers as "lazy," but he still gave the game a 6 out of 10 score. Some choice quotes from his video review:

CNET GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gerstmann was supposedly fired for giving an advertiser's game a low score. I don't buy it. Here's why.

Rumors are flooding the online videogame forums that Jeff Gerstmann, editorial director of CNET's Gamespot, was canned for criticizing an advertiser's product. A tipster informed us that Gerstmann, who had worked at the company for more than a decade, was greeted with a locked office yesterday morning. While there's no official explanation (apparently, it's being kept very hush hush even inside the company) as to why Gerstmann was escorted off the premises, the evidence gathered so far is pretty damning.

So how bad is Windows Vista? The delayed, bloated Microsoft operating system is "very good," according to CNET, earning a 7.4 rating for its Home Premium version. But if you've actually installed it and want a second opinion, you should know that it's one of the "top ten terrible tech products" ... also according to CNET. Whom should we believe? By process of elimination, not CNET.

Options: The Secret Life of Steve Jobs has garnered critical praise from the New York-based media. It's not Huck Finn, but it's a good read — better-written and deeper-thinking than the blog from which it sprang. So of course the Valley's local hacks hate it. Last week it was the SF Weekly. Now, CNET actively dis-recommends the book as a holiday gift. "Fake Steve's influence failed to reach very far outside Silicon Valley, and so the novelized version of the blog has a narrow potential audience indeed," claims the unsigned review (cough yellowbelly cough), in a clear break from reality. "Additionally, three CNET News.com reporters who read Options agreed that the book just isn't that good."

Photographer Mitch Aidelbaum has accused CNET of copying without permission a picture he took of Jerry Yang. One small problem with his claim: He actually did grant CNET permission, through a Creative Commons license. (He also asked CNET to hire him for later photo shoots.) While Aidelbaum later marked his photograph as "all rights reserved," the Creative Commons license, once granted, cannot be revoked. Still, fellow photographers are steamed at CNET for not attributing the photo on its second use — a possible violation of the license by which Aidelbaum granted CNET rights to use the photo.

You may recall CNET Networks sold Webshots to American Greetings yesterday at the fire-sale price of $45 million. Well, it's not stopping there. In an effort to build the "media company of the future," CEO Neil Ashe said, "it is also important to sell some of our properties and we won't shy from it." Important in the we-lost-$16-million-in-the-third-quarter kind of way. Remember when CNET had a monopoly on tech news and reviews online? Now it's holding a slew of Baltic and Continental Avenues, like Search.com and MySimon. Time to trade those in for some hotels on your more rentable domains, Neil.