Did Pepsi cave to the groundswell of public discontent towards Gamespot and pull its Mountain Dew support? Sure looks that way. Yesterday, the site was all dressed in Mountain Dew, as we reported that most game ads had disappeared from the site, replaced with a lot of Dew, Dell, and Sony.

This apocalypse for CNET’s video game property, started with the firing of one of their editors, Jeff Gerstmann on Friday. According to the lopsided story (Eidos and Gamespot haven’t bothered to clarify with anything other than ‘No Comment’ and statements of corporate policy) Gerstmann gave Kane and Lynch (Eidos) a less-than-stellar review, and Eidos pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue from Gamespot. If you believe the people with the torches, Gamespot then turned around and fired Gerstmann. That’s the short version.

Very early this morning, the Pepsi/Mountain Dew ads came down. Coincidence? Maybe. But it seems rather unlikely that Pepsi bought a one day ad on Gamespot for Mountain Dew. It’s not like they’re on a tight budget. At one point yesterday, literally every ad space came up Dew. Now it’s Alienware (Dell). Lots and lots of Alienware.

I’m going to wait and make up my mind about this whole mess once someone from Gamespot, CNET, or Eidos decides they’ve lost enough street cred to open up and talk, however, this whole situation is really beginning to remind me of a soap opera, where one of the characters in the show is mute.

It’s like watching a beating.

I can’t help but ask myself, “With all of the punches that Gamespot is absorbing, why don’t they fight back?”

UPDATE: As of 2:30am (Monday) there are zero ads/wallpapers adorning gamespot.

BROKEN NEWS: Angry Rioters Storm Gamespot Offices

Previous coverage of this Gamespotgate:

Eidos_Strategery_101

Sony_Pepsi_Dell_Support_Gamespot

Gamespot_Readers_Push_Back

Rumor: Gamespot_Fires_Editor_over_Bad_Score