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At last, GameSpot's deafening silence over Editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann's termination ceases -- at least a little bit. And by the sound of it, the people most relieved are the ones doing the talking. On GameSpot's latest episode of the HotSpot podcast, editors Vincent Carravella, Ryan MacDonald, Ricardo Torres, Ryan Davis and Alex Navarro devote the first half to discussion about the growing scandal. It's a conversation that provides some answers, leaves some lingering questions, sends out heartfelt messages to their former boss and co-worker, and above all, is dominated by vented frustrations.

While the crew remained mostly tight-lipped about the specific details behind Gerstmann's firing due to legal reasons, they were extremely vocal about the way it went down. "Everybody recognizes this was handled insanely poorly," said host Vincent Caravella. "No one thinks this was handled the right way." They restated that no other employees knew about Gerstmann's termination until the Wednesday morning he was fired; the staff found out "five or six hours" before the public did.

"The reality is that people like me and Ricardo, we have more senior tenure here than anybody else, and the fact that they didn't even talk to us about it is just ridiculous," said Ryan MacDonald. He went on to say that while management was slow to react at first, after much prodding they now understand it was handled poorly and more transparency was needed. They all said they're just as angry as everyone else, if not more so, about the lack of communication.

As much as they attempted to steer away from specific details, the crew did address the elephant in the room: the rumors and speculation that Gerstmann was fired specifically for his overly negative review of Kane & Lynch. According to the staff, it's flatly untrue. "I'm still sitting here for a reason," said MacDonald. "I've been here for 11 years. You know, I'd be one of the first people to set my hair on fire and run out the front door on Wednesday morning" if that was the case, he said. Ryan Davis also chimed in on the subject, emphatically stating, "It's not Kane & Lynch, all right? I understand that makes a good headline, but it's so much more complicated than that."

MacDonald also addressed one of the key factors of the rumors: the temporary removal of Gerstmann's Kane & Lynch video review. According to MacDonald, he took the video review down himself, not because he was forced to, but because "the quality was not what we do." He said it only had footage from the first level of the game, and the audio quality was poor, so they removed it in order to polish it up. He also shot down the rumor that Gerstmann didn't finish the game, as the Gamertag seen in the video review -- which only had three unlocked achievements -- wasn't the one he used to play through the game.

This was just one of what was referred to as a "Perfect Storm" of incidents that all conspired to give the (incorrect, they say) appearance that Gerstmann was fired due to advertising pressure from Eidos. What remains to be seen is where GameSpot goes from here, other than continuing to run the site the way they always have. "The outside world has pretty much already made its judgment, it's pretty much already decided that our editorial integrity is down the toilet, and that's a real hard thing to come back from right now" said Ricardo Torres.

It's also evident that while the crew won't talk about all the details, there are still some lingering resentments over the whole situation. "These people that work here have my utmost respect. Some don't," said Caravella, who we can only assume was cryptically referring to some people in management.

"I just hope that people will see that the transparency we have here right now in this podcast is genuine and sincere, this is how we feel," said Davis. "This is not a company line, I don't have a script, I am telling you my emotions on this, and you know, this is how I weigh in."

Head over to GameSpot's HotSpot page to hear the whole thing yourself, and stay tuned for more on this story as it happens.