Publishers vs. Press Round 3: Microsoft Ask Gamepartisan.com To Fire Journalist

Even though we predicted that gaming news sites would start running kiss-and-tell exposés on their dealings with publishers, we didn’t think anything would kick off this quick. Less than a day after EGM called out Sony, Midway and Ubisoft, Game Partisan have done the same to Microsoft.

This time, however, things are a bit more insidious. It follows a 6 month comedy of errors about Microsoft’s inability to transfer staff writer Ben Paddon’s gamertag from UK to US billing after he emigrated stateside. Ben says:

“They have been evasive, rude, bigoted and downright offensive to me on the phone and by email. This was punctuated by a conversation yesterday between a Microsoft rep and our editor-in-chief, Jonny DeViney, where Microsoft effectively asked DeViney to drop me from the editorial team to ‘remove any potential sources of contention’ between GP and Microsoft.”

Potential sources of contention? Bear in mind this comment has nothing to do with any of the site’s game coverage, just Paddon’s problems as a gamer. It seems now it doesn’t matter how the publication treats a publisher’s games, but what the journalist’s overriding beliefs are as well.

The bickering looks set to continue now that DeViney has put up an teaser post promising “his own recollection of the wild series of events,” but it’s a rather worrying path the industry seems to be walking down at the moment. I for one don’t want to get all my news from raging fanboys.

Games Partison didn’t cave by the way. Here’s the whole David vs. Goliath fiasco and DeViney’s teaser.