Many of you may remember the so-called “Gerstmann-gate” fiasco last year, where Kane & Lynch got a bad review from Gamespot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann. Gamespot subsequently fired Gerstmann under extremely shady circumstances, presumably under pressure from Eidos.

Shacknews is reporting that Eidos now has hired a PR firm to pressure reviewers to delay their reviews of Tomb Raider Underworld until Monday if they have given it a score below an 8/10, saying they want to keep the Metacritc score high, “…just to ensure that we don’t put people off buying the game…”

Tomb Raider Underworld was released this past Tuesday, November 19th.

Gamasutra today has dropped a bit of a bombshell today from the business side of the industry today. They have uncovered an e-mail from Eidos sent to Ubisoft Montreal proposing that they agree on mutual salary caps to keep employees from leaving one developer for a high salary at another.

A choice quote from the Eidos e-mail is, “I sincerely believe that a collaboration would eventually allow us to better provide for our needs in forming a workforce, and avoid a bid for higher wages which would only benefit the employee, and which would end up harming the industry in the long term.”

EA Montreal confirmed that they received a similar e-mail, but offered no details about it. However they did express uneasiness about such a practice and denied taking part in the collusion.