Ok This is just plain old stupid...
Yes LMG gets things... BIG... FREAKING... WHOOP.... Why the heck does it MATTER?! Because they're getting awesome gear to perform their JOB, while you don't? Suck it up buttercup...
As some of the idiotic people have pointed out: Yes, LMG is a BUSINESS. They get 'free tech' from big name companies.
And as Linus has pointed out: They don't do 'loaner' items anymore. Why? Because they are a BUSINESS. It costs more to ship the items back, than it does to receive them. What sort of crappy business model do you want them to have? One where they hemorrhage money on a daily basis trying to just ship back a product they aren't even being paid to review?
Oh, that's another thing. Why the hell is it such a horrible thing, for a person to be PAID for something? You guys get paid for flipping other people's burgers don't ya? Should we be complaining about how you guys should be providing us free service? Oh, what about those who work for software companies and have to slave away at programming all day. They get paid too don't they? Maybe we should go pounding on their doors demanding free service too?
WHAT. THE HELL. IS WRONG. WITH EVERYONE!?
Do you care if your cable/satellite provider is being paid to run advertisements? NO. Do you care if a movie theater is being paid to run commercials? NO. Do you care that Google (now alphabet I guess) is being paid to show advertisements on their search results or on non partnered/monetized youtube accounts? NO.
So why the flipping hell do any of you care if someone is being paid to make a VIDEO or not? "Oh its cause we want honesty and have a right to know!" BULL F-ING CRAP!!! You guys simply put people up on shiny gold pedestals and think of them as gods, then you start thinking "wait, maybe they're being paid to do this? is this their real opinion?" and you start spiraling out of control. Who really cares!? You clicked on the video for ENTERTAINMENT. Maybe a few people out there clicked on it for the sake of actually needing information about the product so they can make a purchase, but that ISN'T what LMG is about! They were about ENTERTAINMENT... Hence the word, ya know "Media" in their company name! They found it fun to make videos, and people enjoyed watching them! Sure they also thought 'we can help people make better buying choices' probably, but they didn't get into this business for the sake of 'swaying public buying habits'... they did it because it was FUN for THEM!
All of this, is just moronically stupid... They get to keep products. Big whoop. They get given products to do 'product placement'.... BIG WHOOP. You know who else does that? Movie companies, music 'artists', TV studios... Just because YouTubers aren't big like Warner Brothers, or CNN, doesn't mean you can suddenly bash them for things you just simply ignore elsewhere. "Oh look mommy! There's a giant McDonald's sign behind Captain America's shield!" "Daddy daddy look! That man's drinking a Coke as he talks to Spider Man!".... Do any of you guys give a flying crap? NOPE. You either don't even notice it, or just flat out don't care. They don't even TELL YOU that they were sponsored to do those product placements! But YouTubers go out of their freaking busy way, to let you all know!
Linus, Luke, everyone else at LMG. Just do what you've been doing. Sure I personally think you've gotten way too advertisement heavy lately, but I can deal with that because now you've been putting the advertisements at the end of videos, allowing me to get right to the meat of the video right from the start, then idly listen to the adverts as I reply to a text message or something.
For everyone else: Get your freaking heads out of your collective butts, and start thinking like a DECENT, HUMAN, BEING for once. They get paid by SPONSORS to cover costs of producing the videos. They get given electronics because why the heck not? nVidia, AMD, intel, Microsoft, HTC, and whomever else they've managed to 'review' or get some sort of 'item' from, just wants publicity. They don't NEED to pay YouTubers to give them good reviews... or reviews at all! Simply mentioning their name is probably enough to drive sales up .2% or something. And the sales they'd get simply from reviewing a unit, has NOTHING to do with the fact that they gave it a positive or negative review. The sales go up because people KNOW about the product!
Would you buy a product you saw on amazon that was $200+ and had no idea who the manufacturer was? Most likely not! So what do you do? You go to YouTube or some other place and search it up. It doesn't matter WHO you find doing a video about it. So long as someone had it in a video, You know that it might be worth buying because you weren't the only one considering to buy it.
So just stop all this BS already. They are a business, they make videos, they get sponsors... Oh, that's another funny point! "Professional Gamers" get sponsored all the time, and get products given to them by vendors and companies... does anyone complain? NOPE! This is just so freaking PATHETIC it just simply isn't funny! NO ONE CARES about all these sponsorships given to all these different people... Movies, TV Shows, Commercials, Movie Theaters, and/or "Pro Gamers"... But whenever it comes to YouTubers, all hell breaks lose!
There is not a SINGLE reason you give that can justify any of this crap going around. Not. A. Single. One.
So again:
SUCK IT UP! STOP YOUR WHINING! STOP YOUR COMPLAINING!
If you think it should be done differently, THEN GO DO IT YOURSELF!
If you think this sort of stuff is easy to do, THEN GO DO IT YOURSELF!
If you think you can give entertaining reviews without gaining money from any outside sources, THEN GO DO IT YOURSELF!
Leave people alone to do their freaking jobs. Get a life or something for instance... Go build something maybe? Be productive for society hopefully? Nah, who am I kidding...
