It's an interesting read.

And here's the review from 10 years ago.

Frank stopped freelancing for GameSpot in response to Jeff being fired in 2007, and hasn't been involved in games media since August 2008.

edit: proper facts.

Thanks for posting that, an interesting read. Got say to the score should of stayed at his original score, not because I agree or disagree with it, but because that's what his initial opinions were, changing it due to pressures from Sega was wrong. But I guess we all know how going against publishers when your site is ad driven turns out.

I agree, they shouldn't have changed the score. From today's point of view, it's clear that Provo was right about the game's flaws. Review scores are stupid anyways. What's really the difference between a 6.8 game and 7.8 game?

Reading this made me wonder how much of this corruption happened and went unnoticed behind the scenes of various games publications. He says GS changed policies after this review, and i'd guess Jeff and Greg Kasavin did their best to prevent stuff like this from happening, but the company was so big that it must have been impossible at times.

great read.

"

I agree, they shouldn't have changed the score. From today's point of view, it's clear that Provo was right about the game's flaws. Review scores are stupid anyways. What's really the difference between a 6.8 game and 7.8 game?

Reading this made me wonder how much of this corruption happened and went unnoticed behind the scenes of various games publications. He says GS changed policies after this review, and i'd guess Jeff and Greg Kasavin did their best to prevent stuff like this from happening, but the company was so big that it must have been impossible at times.

"

I never even knew they changed the score. As much as I disagree with Shenmue being a 6.8, I disagree more with GameSpot giving into external pressures and changing it. At least they didn't fire the guy.  
 
(Also, I should point out that I'm a super-Shenmue-fanboy, and thus the game will always be a 10/10 for me, despite all of its obvious and glaring flaws). 
 
Also, interesting read. 

I wasn't familiar with this tale before, the story is quite disheartening. Hopefully this type of editorial pressure is a thing of the past...

Very interesting.  I wouldn't have expected they would go back to the author and fret so much over a review score like that.  Personally I think Shenmue is an amazing game, and the reasons he didn't like Shenmue could be applied to hundreds of other games many people consider classics even if those people didn't enjoy Shenmue.
 
The core problem is people enjoy or don't enjoy games for different reasons.  Applying a one-size-fits-all score to a game is just idiotic.  Honestly I think this sort of stuff could be eliminated and game developers, publishers, and even gamers would benefit if scoring a game was done away with.  It seems idiotic that reviewers and publishers still favor short term prosperity over the well being of all by continuing this destructive trend.

"The core problem is people enjoy or don't enjoy games for different reasons.  Applying a one-size-fits-all score to a game is just idiotic."

That's exactly what i think.

I like that the Giant Bomb editorial style strongly emphasizes the fact that reviews are an expression of a single person's opinion about a game, not a scientific assessment of a game's quality (which is not even possible).

"People occasionally ask me how much pay-for-play went on behind the scenes at GameSpot. Obviously, I couldn't say for sure, but my own interactions with Jeff, Alex, Brad, and Ryan in those subsequent years gave me the impression that they were trying very hard to maintain a level of integrity not typical to the entertainment industry."
 
And this is why Giantbomb has risen to the top.
 
It's totally fine if you don't agree with a reviewers opinion about a game - opinions differ - but for me it is utterly important that these opinions are honest and not heavily influenced by publishers etc.

Damn, son.

That was a really interesting read. I wasn't a GameSpot reader back in 2000, so I never fully knew what went down with the Shenmue review, and it's interesting to hear what happened straight from the horses mouth. Gamespot was always a weird mix between the fantastic editorial staff that valued integrity and honnesty, and the corporate money making nature of the cnet suits, and that's what lead to things like this going down.

" I wasn't familiar with this tale before, the story is quite disheartening. Hopefully this type of editorial pressure is a thing of the past... "

Really interesting read.  My brother worked at CNet when the Gerstmann thing went down so I got some rumors at the time, but I always wanted to hear the complete story from both sides.

That was a very good read.  Thanks for sharing this.

Nice read. Gives me more reason to believe that GB review scores are more credible than others 

I think he's wrong about the overall quality and importance of Shenmue, but his complaints about specific areas are hard to deny. That he had to succumb to outside pressure is regrettable, but on the other hand I feel the 7.8 score is more fitting than 6.8, due to the game's originality and at the time incredible presentation/open-world experience.

I was half-expecting some blogs to pick this one up. Nothing yet. Don't they love this kind of stuff? Intrigue, dude.

I remember when this review went up...me and my friend were freaking out...granted we were like 12 or 13 and thought Shenmue was the best thing since sliced bread.  Great game.

Great read, thanks for sharing. 
 
Although I still want to do some fact checking myself, this seems pretty legit, and really interesting.  Glad it came out.

Fascinating and honestly kinda depressing look at how little games culture has changed in the last ten years.

Frank's a good guy. That was a nice read.

Oh, hey. 

"In the long run, it all probably worked out for the best."

6.8 is probably a bit generous, in hindsight.

This subject seemed to come up during a GOTY 2016 video. Guess it's more widely known now.

Glad someone dredged this up from the past because I never got around to reading it back then and it was a very interesting read indeed - especially the frankness about how much that stuff paid back in the day which you don't hear people discuss as openly.