Long story short, Gamespot.com is sort of denying that it fired a reviewer after publisher Eidos complained about the reviewer's low score for Eidos title Kane & Lynch.

Gamespot has admitted that the reviewer was, in fact, fired at some point after the review ran.

But that, according to Joystiq, is as much as Gamespot is willing to cop to:

We just got off the phone with Sarah Cain, a CNET spokesperson who wanted to amend CNET's previous statement to Joystiq on the recent firing of executive editor Jeff Gerstmann. While reiterating that CNET does not discuss personal employee matters with the press, Cain said directly that "we do not terminate employees based on external pressure from advertisers." When asked specifically about whether any such pressure was even attempted on Eidos' part, Cain had no comment. We're still waiting for a response to multiple e-mail requests for comment by Eidos PR.

Much more at the Joystiq link.

I'm writing about this affair in my column in tomorrow's paper. I don't think this statement from Gamespot even begins to answer all the questions.

UPDATE: Yeah, things aren't looking good for Gamespot.

UPDATE: Here's my column that ran in the paper.