Response to Linus' Terrible Non-Apology About RAID Sponsorship

[Moonzy]

10 hours ago, crazzp said:

Why are people so upset that LMG may not be using the products they put on their ads?

It's to do with what they said before

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

If your policy about ads has changed from "we only sponsor products we actually use, like or feel comfortable with recommending" to "we will take any sponsor that isn't a literal scam" then make that clear to your viewers. Don't change stance behind the scenes without informing the users who you have built up a trust with over the years.

 

[NoNameCola]

Quote

People understand that ads on bollocks and each ad is a clear cut segment of its own with no inherent relation to the TV network.

The ads on LTT on the other hand, are tightly integrated into the content itself, the ads are presented by the CEO of the channel itself

I am not saying that I like the current system. I think that having the ads clearly separate like how Hardware Canucks does it. Or just have another person read it and edit it in. (That also saves time on set)

 

It is clear that Linus has changed his position. I mean his roast was sponsored by a coffee company but he doesn't even drink coffee.

 

They aren't small anymore, they are a large company with tens of staff, while they may not have said it, it is clear they don't care about the "quality" of sponsors. Like he said in his stream. Now it is "can I be sued if I promote this" instead of "this is a product I have tested and personally approve of". I mean I skip past the ads anyway and at least it is not randomly in the middle of the video.

 

The scene of him on his phone pretending to play was also kinda misleading. I did not catch that the first time. If anything don't do that again.

[XXOUTT]

On 1/18/2021 at 9:41 PM, LAwLz said:

First of all, I'd like to say that I don't have anything against gatcha games. Right now I am playing Genshin Impact and I have spent about 80 dollars on it with no regrets. I think the game is fun and while I really dislike the ludicrous and criminally low 0.6% drop chance on 5 star items/characters, I do think the game is a lot of fun.

Secondly, I didn't see the video that was sponsored by RAID. I don't watch LTT videos other than the WAN show. In my eyes, the LTT channel is terrible, but I can see why some people like it. In any case, since I do watch the WAN show (or rather, listens to it on my commute) I did end up hearing the "apology" (or rather non-apology) and it was one of the worst apologies I have ever seen. It's full of deflections, hypocrisy, flip flopping, flexing, doubleing down, starwman arguments and incorrect facts.

 

I rewatched the first 13 minutes of the WAN show and wrote down my response to the various points.

 

 

 

 

The video starts with Linus and Luke joining around about RAID Shadow Legends trying to be all “how do you do fellow kids” with their viewers. Look at us making fun of ARID, aren’t we great right? 

 

Isn’t that a reason why you might need more money? If you are hiring a bunch of people then the logic is that you need to make more money, and thus might become more lenient with which sponsors to choose, based on how much they pay.

I mean, you have time and time again given “look how many people we have employed” as a reason for why you cram your videos full of ads, but now all of a sudden you are trying to use “look at how many people we are employing” as an argument for why you don’t need money? You are talking out of both sides of your mouth Linus.

 

More employees => more expenses => more money you need to make => more sponsors necessary

 

That makes the whole thing worse in my eyes. Your viewers are mad that you got sponsored by a shitty product and when they try to justify it in their heads they go “well maybe they got paid a lot and it was too good of a deal, that’s why they are trying to shove a shitty product on me” and your response is “no we actually did the sponsor spot for less money than we should have.

 

Nice way of going “this is not my fault guys, please don’t be mad at me”. 

 

I feel like you switched argument in the middle of the paragraph here, probably because it’s live but I want to address both parts.

To me it sounds like you are, again, trying to deflect criticism. I didn’t even watch the video but by your own admission the words you said in the video mislead your viewers and now you are trying to put the blame on your viewers for being mislead because “you should know I don’t do everything personally”. That’s a shitty excuse. Do you just read anything sponsors put in the teleprompter without questioning it? Because your defense right now sounds like that’s what you are doing. 

 

Secondly, you used to say that you did not accept sponsors that you would not personally recommend or use. It seems like that bar has now been lowered to “as long as it’s not flat out a literal scam then we’re fine with having it as a sponsor”. I have known that this has been the case for years now, but it’s good to see that you are finally being honest to your viewers about it.

Remember this people, the due diligence LMG does when it comes to sponsors is “dink around with it to make sure it’s not mining bitcoins on you’re computer”. 

 

Great job of patting yourselves on the back at the end as well. “We didn’t have to do due diligence with RAID because everyone knows it is a game anyway so you’re welcome viewers” is what you sound like.

 

Then Linus spends a couple of minutes showing everyone the few games he has on his phone, for some reason. No idea why he is doing this because it has nothing to do with any arguments I have seen in the comments. Nobody is questioning if Linus does or does not play games on his phones. 

 

I don’t see how this is relevant to your viewers. By choosing to be sponsored by a company, you agree to endorse their product. It doesn’t matter if you personally only like some of your sponsors because your viewers do not know which sponsors you actually like and which ones you are only endorsing because they gave you a bunch of money.

 

Again, you mention something and then brush it off. You said that you care about integrity, and then completely shift focus to “as long as the product kinda does what it says then I am fine with being sponsored by them”. That’s a really bad definition of “integrity”. Integrity means having strong moral principles. “I will take money from a company as long as it isn’t a literal scam” is not enough to be deemed a “strong moral principle”, especially not when it’s a game developed by a gambling machine manufacturer and your audience is like ~14.

 

I remember when LMG used to ask the community BEFORE they took sponsors what the community thought. I guess the new strategy is to take the money and then ask for forgiveness afterward…

Also, you were being combative. People answered your tweet with things like “it’s pay to win” and your replies were “who cares? You don’t *need to win it…”. 

 

Well that’s one of the reasons people gave you. Another reason was that it’s a really bad game to the point where it’s barely a game at all. It’s basically a slot machine praying on people who easily get addicted to gambling.

You yourself have been very quick to throw shit at EA for their loot boxes, yet when you get sponsored by someone who is EA but worse you do a 180 turn and go “well it is a game so it’s fine, stop whining about it”.

A third reason people gave you is that their ads are disingenuous and doesn’t give creators that much freedom on what to say. You yourself even admitted that the ad read gave your viewers the wrong impression by making it sound like you personally played and liked the game.

Another reason people gave you is that since the game is bad and it prays on vulnerable people by essentially being an unregulated casino it shows a lack of integrity on your part.

But my guess is that you won’t respond to any of these criticisms and will instead make a bunch of strawman arguments.

 

Hold on there Linus, stop trying to make your viewers sound like hypocrites by changing the subject. Your viewers have told you where they draw the line, and they draw the line so that RAID is on the bad side. That’s it. You might not think RAID is predatory or that it’s wrong to profit off vulnerable people, but your viewers clearly do. Don’t try and change your viewers minds that they shouldn’t think RAID’s business practices are scummy.

 

But World of Warships is a decent game. You can’t just go “well because this game shares some elements with RAID they are therefore equal and you can’t like one without liking the other”. This is such a ridiculous argument I hope nobody in your audience actually buys this logic. It’s like saying RAID and World of Warcraft are the same because both have orcs in them and you can pay for stuff.

 

Also, you are completely misinterpreting the event in World of Warships. I don’t even play the game and yet a quick Google search shows that you got so much things wrong and left things unsaid to mislead people.

The World of Warships event was doable as a Free-to-Play player. It was not as you said “completely, physically humanly fucking impossible to complete”. If you did it completely free to play, it was so hard to the point where you had to play the game every day for like a month, but it was doable.

The event wasn’t just about getting the legendary ship. You got a bunch of extra stuff once you reached different milestones. So even if you didn’t get the final reward (the ship), you did get a bunch of other stuff even if you didn’t play that much.

Spending a bit of money would have allowed you to get the legendary ship far easier, and that would most likely have been less money than buying a similar ship would have cost.

The thing in World of Warships was a special event where you could, if you wanted, get extra stuff for free, or even better stuff if you paid some money. It was a 1 month thing (I think) in addition to the regular game. RAID on the other hand, is basically entirely a non-game where your primary objective is to pay money. It barely has any gameplay.

 

And because, unlike RAID, it is actually a game with some microtransaction mechanics in it. RAID on the other hand, is a microtransaction app with some game-like mechanics in it.

 

RAID is not single player… I mean, you can play it in single player if you want but it does have multiplayer modes as well (which from what I have heard gets pushed down your throat later in the game). Plarium even has it under the “multiplayer games” section on their website.

Discover the Best Free Online Multiplayer Games (plarium.com)

 

Well not everyone thinks that way, and I honestly believe that deep down even you Linus doesn’t buy that bullshit. Of course people play games to win, even in single player games. I think winning is just as important in a single player games as in a multiplayer game. 

 

 

This is the point where I got bored of writing down everything I thought was wrong with Linus' response to the drama.

I think the major take aways from this is that LMG doesn't have any integrity when choosing sponsors. Their "due diligence" is checking if something is a literal scam or not and if it isn't, they might approve the sponsor. 

 

 

 

Edit:

Had to add some more stuff.

 

What? Of course it is your fault if you agree to be part of that marketing push. When you accept a sponsorship you endorse whichever company you agree to take money from and as a result what they do will reflect on you. You choose to asscociate with whatever company you take sponsorships from. I understand that from your POV you are the victim, but if you look at it from the POV of your viewers the situation becomes very different.

Stop playing the victim.

 

 

Well if 98% of the food I ordered at a restaurant was good but 2% of it was literal dog shit then that 2% would kind of ruin the other 98%. But in this case it is even worse because it's you admitting that you don't give a crap about who sponsors you as long as you get paid, even if it means pushing bad products on your viewers. It's like finding out your restaurant not only serve 2% dog shit in their food at all time, but also that the restaurant starts defending the dogshit being in the food and berating their customers for wanting it removed.

The response was incredibly tone deaf, and I commented as much on the video itself. But not exactly necessarily for the reasons you are sting in your post.

It was however actually insulting they way they went about it. But as I left a long comment on the video, I’m not rehashing it again here.

[XXOUTT]

On 1/19/2021 at 9:32 AM, Master Disaster said:

Fun fact: LMG is a business & Linus personally owes us nothing. His "non apology" was a non apology because he has nothing to apologise for, the second he allows the consumers who literally give him nothing to dictate what he can and cannot do with his business is when LMG dies and over 20 people end up on unemployment.

What? His users ARE his business.

[Giganthrax]

LMG is a company. They need advertisements to make money. Who cares if they personally play raid shadow legends or not? 

 

This is one of the most ridiculous complaints I've ever seen. If it wasn't so long, I'd think it's a troll. 

[LAwLz]

I like how Linus has tried to push the narrative that their sponsors are carefully vetted for the last 3 or so WAN shows now. Maybe he relied how bad his excuses for RAID were and is trying to take back his words?

 

 

11 hours ago, Giganthrax said:

LMG is a company. They need advertisements to make money. Who cares if they personally play raid shadow legends or not? 

That is not the issue I had. Please read my post.