GPD Takes Steam Deck Footage from YouTubers without Credit for Marketing GPD Devices. Blocks GamingOnLinux News Outlet when Confronted.

[Jaxseven]

Summary

News site GamingOnLinux’s Twitter account recently posted they were blocked by the Chinese handheld company’s Twitter page after accusing them of taking YouTube footage of Steam Decks without credit to use in marketing for GPD devices. Liam Dawe describes the situation as such.

 

Quote

Recently, they started taking various Steam Deck videos from YouTube creators, sticking them together with a look at their own devices and not crediting any of the people who put the work into those videos. On top of that, GPD has been attaching a "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)" license to the videos, again, without permission from the original creators.

 

When Liam tweeted this to GPD’s official Twitter account, instead of any type of response he was immediately blocked by the company. After noticing this, Liam proceeded to post a follow up tweet and a write up on his Linux gaming focused news site. Liam mentions he would’ve been open to exploring Linux on one of GPD’s devices however after these events brings the company’s integrity into question.

 

My thoughts

As I’ve mentioned in my last GPD post I was a customer of GPD backing the Win 3 and I’m completely in the camp of GamingOnLinux here. I’ve watched GPD’s moves heavily from the announcement of the Win 3 to now and it’s safe to say describing GPD as desperate is accurate. The company does not handle criticism well and will go as far as resorting to bribery unhappy customers with heavy discounts on upcoming GPD devices to get them to stay quiet at least in the cast with the GPD backers who were organizing chargebacks on the Win 3 due to received the wrong WiFi chip. All of that is detailed in a Reddit post about shifting attitudes in GPD’s subreddit. 

 

Sources

GPD are getting quite desperate against the Steam Deck - GamingOnLinux by Liam Dawe

Video from GamingOnLinux’s official YouTube showing proof.

[Fasauceome]

Dang first time I've heard of "GPD" and I already don't like em

[Haaselh0ff]

YIKES. These signs of desperation in the face of a competitor does not bode well for them to me.

[da na]

31 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Dang first time I've heard of "GPD" and I already don't like em

They made a few little handhelds that maybe a couple people bought. Like those Windows CE 3 PDAs but from this decade. 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

57 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

Dang first time I've heard of "GPD" and I already don't like em

 Really?’ Did read any discussions on the steam deck? GPD comes up a lot

[Kilrah]

GPD make great stuff, but unfortunately that's the typical response from Chinese companies who don't understand Western markets, seen the exact same with other companies in a similar position.

[Rauten]

Lately they do seem to be in a bit of a hurry to bury themselves in the deepest PR hole they can dig...

[MageTank]

GPD has a history of doing shady stuff like this. They changed the shipping BIOS on the GPD Win Max because the advertised memory speed of 3733 was unstable, so they decided to change the speed and not warn any of the backers of this change. This wouldn't be too problematic if not for the fact that the iGPU scales pretty heavily with memory speed and the 3200 profile they flashed is pretty mediocre.

 

They also had an issue on the same GPD Win Max with a large dark square appearing in the center of the screen:

 

Mine has the exact same issue too and they've done nothing to address it.

 

I enjoy the creativity of their products, but as a company they are pretty scummy. Very little quality control efforts and almost non-existent customer support. This is completely ignoring the fiasco that was their original shipping promises that ended up getting delayed several months with little communication as to why.

[Jaxseven]

27 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

GPD make great stuff, but unfortunately that's the typical response from Chinese companies who don't understand Western markets, seen the exact same with other companies in a similar position.

I'd like to argue that their stuff while impressive at times, is not of high quality. My Win 3 had loose thumb stick caps pretty soon after I received it to the point of falling off if lightly brushed. It was virtually unplayable due to the caps shifting underneath my thumbs when in use. I eventually gave in and bought replacement caps from their(?) AlliExpress page except it gave me no description of quantity of caps. I ordered two packs and ended up with eight replacement caps as there's four per pack which is on me more than them.

Fast forward to last week when someone had this same issue but GPD support wasn't giving them anything and there were no caps on AlliExpress anymore. I reached out to the Reddit user and shipped him my extra 4 pack. The user was overjoyed by the gesture but it's concerning the only way they solved the issue was pure luck. I can also say the plastic shell of the Win 3 is quite soft as it's scuffed up by the included dock by the USB-C port.

[Jaxseven]

5 minutes ago, MageTank said:

GPD has a history of doing shady stuff like this. They changed the shipping BIOS on the GPD Win Max because the advertised memory speed of 3733 was unstable, so they decided to change the speed and not warn any of the backers of this change. This wouldn't be too problematic if not for the fact that the iGPU scales pretty heavily with memory speed and the 3200 profile they flashed is pretty mediocre.

 

They also had an issue on the same GPD Win Max with a large dark square appearing in the center of the screen:

 

Mine has the exact same issue too and they've done nothing to address it.

 

I enjoy the creativity of their products, but as a company they are pretty scummy. Very little quality control efforts and almost non-existent customer support. This is completely ignoring the fiasco that was their original shipping promises that ended up getting delayed several months with little communication as to why.

Yeah they did that same sort of changing without announcement with the WiFi modules in the original Win 3 units. When they did correct the issue with new Win 3 models they had much slower SD readers in those units so no matter what you got screwed in some area of the product. I thankfully have had a mostly painless experience compared to a lot of people but that's because I read all the horror stories before I got hands on with the unit.

[Kilrah]

Yeah it seems the amount of issues has increased lately.

I have a Win1, Win2 and MicroPC, a friend as a Win2 and a Min Max 2021. Of all these only my MicroPC has had issues (display cover broke at hinge point, sticky keys in the bottom right corner, battery that dies if left a month unused).

 

That also matches the other company I was referring to. Started by being a small company making really nice niche products that were great, they were listening to users, didn't do much in terms of advertising/PR, became big based on the quality and price/value of their products... then they went public, someone started looking at numbers only, ignoring what people wanted, making more and more mistakes while raising prices and driving most of their initial userbase away, then starting to do the exact same crappy marketing/PR to try and compensate for it...

A lot of it is driven by cultural differences, admitting fault is taboo over there so companies that try to handle western markets themselves without understanding that it's not how it works there get into these situations. The same thing's been the reason for the few outrages about bigger brands e.g. with MSI when their TW office got into a mess.