Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[RazielKanos]

1 minute ago, kreative said:

I have joined this board 4 years ago and mainly watching HU and LTT for over the last 5 years. You are just salty because people call you out for your ignorant behavior, when the criticism LMG is getting is very valid

How is it fanboyism when linus refuses to test the product on the card it was designed for, but triples down that his test findings were correct? He absolutely deserves to be called out for it.

but you are not the only person posting in this topic. Maybe you haven't noticed all the rage baiting, rude behavior, trolling and throwing fals accusations by account that all have been created within the lat 8 hours.

You have LMG Fanboys that claim their God can't be wrong and you havbe GN Fanboys that claim the God can't be wrong.

Both is silly - just my 2 cents

[bandainamcofan]

4 minutes ago, trustmebro16 said:

purposely decided to not perform the tests correctly

This is undeniable. If he wanted them done correctly, he would have used the right GPU.

[UTiii]

Linus vs Steve fight on the undercard of Elon vs zuck

 

on topic, why is GN so worried if LTT is mistakenly putting up wrong specs, minor mistakes or what ever even big mistakes. he should focus on his own content. 
 

GN is a competing tech review channel so find it odd they are going after LTT on matters regarding how they are performing / not performing as a tech channel

 

. I believe that is for the viewers to decide akin to voting with your wallet or with your views in this case.

 

 

 

 

 

[JoshuaScholar]

What about the OTHER issue.

 

Not Billet Labs, but videos are going out too quickly, with asterisk corrections if at all and the employees are complaining that they can't be proud of their work?

 

Billet Labs was just a demonstration of a bad attitude toward a problem by management. 

[filpo]

Just now, JoshuaScholar said:

What about the OTHER issue.

 

Not Billet Labs, but videos are going out too quickly, with asterisk corrections if at all and the employees are complaining that they can't be proud of their work?

 

Billet Labs was just a demonstration of a bad attitude toward a problem by management. 

Our attention span is too short, we'll zip from one to the other

[Godrick]

How can you have a KPI on Quality whilst they are under pressure to rush out videos, ofcourse this spits out errors. This sounds like typical min maxing of your employees in a typical office job

[Dom1252]

3 minutes ago, trustmebro16 said:

you are assuming Linus replied to the emails himself
purposely decided to not perform the tests correctly

purposely ensure the wrong gpu was used

purposely decide to ruin a company

who is claiming he replied himself? it's just major communication error that shouldn't stand in any company, it happens, ok, but Linus said they won't try fix it for future, which for me is the biggest issue with this and shows how incompetent Linus personally is and that he should never run any company 

"purposely decided to not perform the tests correctly" - yes he did, I mean he is in the video "review" of that cooler 

"purposely ensure the wrong gpu was used" - he did exactly that, his employees stated that he should retest it with correct HW, he said "lol, no" 

"purposely decide to ruin a company" - this I don't think is what is happening, I don't believe Linus did this purposely to destroy them, he did it solely for the lols and views, hiding it behind incompetence... he just wanted a "fun" video with no facts, just his personal opinion... which is completely fine if you state it as such, but don't pretend it's an honest review 

[Elinzar]

5 minutes ago, trustmebro16 said:

yeah theyre SOOO dead in the water 

10 hours ago, lets see how recent those coments are

 

[Charles Bravis]

Hello Linus,

 

I have watched many of your videos and used them to guide my purchasing decisions. Seeing these concerns raised and then your rather poor response makes me feel quite disappointed. You can do better.

 

Best Regards,

 

Charles

[bhop_monster_jam]

europeans just waking up:

 

[dogwitch]

2 hours ago, UncleFunkle said:

I think a bunch of Steve's concerns were valid and that LMG should strive to improve on quality and just generally ensuring better communication. That said, I do also think Steve having some direct communication with Linus would have been nice. But Steve does seem to be into this style of dramatized video recently (it's why I've almost entirely stopped watching his videos).

 

Hopefully LMG does start doing better on quality/accuracy. It's going to hurt the Labs name if they don't.

 

 

those tend to get the most views/donation and sell merch

[CoveWolf]

So yea we are at this point and everyone has thrown stuff back and forth with 74 or more pages of messages. What I’m about to say isn’t defending Linus and I am not praising Gamers Nexus. 

 

First off auctioning off intellectual property to the public is not cool and I believe this was a mistake. Since this reveals potential company secrets. Also not showing results with the 3090 in the review wasn’t great since that’s the card it was designed for and they didn’t show it. So yea of course it’s gonna perform bad with a 40 series card. But you also have to admit that this is only one incident and I’m sure they won’t auction/release anything like this again. Not saying it’s justified because ITS NOT. But just saying the people learn from their mistakes.

 

As for the inaccuracy on comparison graphs. Yes this needs to be fixed and maybe they should release less videos. (Maybe 1 vid/2 days?) or come up with better processes to verify videos for accuracy. Though I think it’s also important to note that while LTT videos probably have a big influence on consumer spending for a product. It’s also best practice on a consumer not to trust what one video on YouTube says. If you are seriously considering buying a product then PLEASE watch multiple tech reviews and news sources. This will help you get a more accurate picture of how the product performs and thus helping you decide wether it’s worth to buy it. I would not just say this about LTT but also Gamers Nexus, JayzTwoCents, Hardware Unboxed, ETC.

 

In closing, I’m still a Linus and LTT fan and I strongly hope this will get better since the community is not happy which will most likely lead to change since they won’t watch if it doesn’t. I hope people will try to look at it from a level point of view. Obviously there is some stuff that is not ok that needs to change but instead off getting upset and cursing LTT we should try and encourage change.

[Walt Raleigh]

9 hours ago, LinusTech said:

There won't be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I've already said, and I've done so privately.

To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn't go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication... AND the fact that while we haven't sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I've told him that I won't be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I'll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of 'Team Media'. When/if he's ready to do so again I'll be ready.

To my team (and my CEO's team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we've been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it's clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn't built in a day, but that's no excuse for sloppiness.

Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we're not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it's sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we've communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah... What we're doing hasn't been in many years, if ever.. and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn't materially change the recommendation. That doesn't mean these things don't matter. We've set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven't seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you're really looking for it... The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I'm REALLY excited about what the future will hold.

 

With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I've already addressed above) is an 'accuracy' issue. It's more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again... mystery) would have been impossible... and also didn't affect the conclusion of the video... OR SO I THOUGHT...

 

I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn't make sense to buy... so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn't really make a difference.

 

Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn't mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip.  I missed that, but it wasn't because I didn't care about the consumer.. it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I've watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It's an astonishingly unforgiving market.

 

Either way, I'm sorry I got the community's priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn't show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn't to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it's an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y'know, eat).

 

With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient. 

 

We can test that... with this post. Will the "It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they're taking care of it" reality manage to have the same reach? Let's see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it's been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I'm a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.

 

Thanks for reading this.

This response gives the impression you're taking the criticism too close to your heart while also taking most of it at face value. Sure GN did some small unprofessional moves by not asking for context from your end and pushed a narrative based on the point they want to make, but you can't go "it's sad the community doesn't know better, you raised the pitchforks too quickly" when: 1) you've also said the community knows things are more complicated, that you ignore/block bad takes while acknowledging those are the minority, and other arguments that in conjunction imply that you have a better understanding of your community, of course the people who really cares don't forget about the human factor in a company and of course there's more to the communication problems surrounding most mistakes; and

2) you've said that when the problems are big and obvious the company responsible must be transparent and address them fair and straight with solutions at the standard they are trying to hold themselves up to, then you must put the energy to make up for the Billet incident (yes, that includes what happened with the prototype at LTX no people shouldn't let you forget about that) and respond with actions accordingly to the people asking for the context and a better review of the production process and the way mistakes are being handled recently, if you are open to evaluate the effects of the push for a set number of videos per week, the progress and problems of Labs integration and how long would it take to rearrange/fix it, things than have been happening more than once and aren't restricted to one channel (that we know you've talked about before, again, no one is saying you are pretending to ignore this).

 

A lot of the points being made in this thread alone are incredibly reasonable, in fact people that clearly care about the channel and the Labs project are doing their best to help and improve the production process and the integration of the system you've envisioned so it really isn't that bad of an idea to take the feedback, review it and come up with solutions that are up your alley that maybe exceeds expectations.

[Elinzar]

7 minutes ago, trustmebro16 said:

yeah theyre SOOO dead in the water 

Dude this reddit post was 3 hours after GN publication, did you get the point?

without GN reporting, nobody would have been supporting them at all!

ofc after this blowup people will take notice and support them, but the point is that if GN havent said that, all they would have gotten was a cheque from linus, a pat in the back and a gud luck while his prototype and reputation would have been trashed and lost

[Pulpamos]

Linus and team,

 

As with other things, when people react to things, whether reacting positively or negatively, it means they care.

 

I have watched you and your videos since I can remember, since Luke was part of the channel and you recorded videos in your garage cooling PC's with Refrigerators.

 

When I saw GN video yesterday, I though "finally someone who speaks about this!"

 

We love your channel and we want it do do great. But we also want you and the leadership team to stop, look around and make some needed course corrections.

 

We also want you to know we appreciate what you and all of your team do. Take this opportunity to self reflect and make a change with the support of the community.

 

 

[ScoggsUK]

15 minutes ago, Elinzar said:

Pwned wasnt aware of the LTT hit piece of a review on their mouse and they had to leave a comment like any peasant like us

Billet labs wasnt aware on LTT hit piece on them either

altough i agree that GN should have approached regardless and say Bro Chill at least
LTT hasnt have done the same with others so they are not in a position to ask the same imo

but ideally yes GN should have approached

The GN piece and the others you mention are separate in my book. 

 

The two you mention are product reviews and contain both an opinion piece and review of testing data. If they tested it incorrectly then the product owners 100% should be allowed to address it and point this out to the reviewer.

 

On the opinion side/review piece they don't need to reach out.

 

For the GN piece, this is investigative journalism and it would have been the correct course of action to reach out to LMG for comments on the issues. 

[YZF-RX]

25 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

wow a 800 dollar waterblock for a outdated gpu sign me up.

 

its also a outdated water block design with a bad flow pattern that fits no consumer cases/boards on the market

its also made out of COPPER which means you can't use it with 90% of the other water loop components without running into serious metalergy issues

 

 

there is SO MANY REASONS why this is dumb that have nothing todo with performace that it boggles the mind

 

but think about this  we used to make our water blocks in the same manner as billet. we stopped doing that for a reason. 

maby ponder what those reasons might have been

 

its like beating my head against a wall with you people you don't seem to understand that linus could have taken out out of the box and chucked it in the trash AND IT Litterally would have changed NOTHING 

 

Some ideas no matter how well intentioned are just bad. this was a bad idea 

 

did linus/LMG handle it poorly absolutely

does it  change that fact that the product was doomed from the get go NOPE! 

 

I watched the entire video with a dull pain in my head thinking to my self NO GO PLEASE NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

because the product struct me as illconvienced waste of copper time and money 

 

You really don't get it do you, the example of the 3090ti/12900k waterblock is for old hardware but this prototype wasn't and if it was anything like the original then the performance was far from crap or worthless like you seem to be dead set on believing.

 

This was never marketed to be the answer to every single consumer, not everyone has the money to afford it. That's why linus said it was crap, because it costs a lot and in his own words it didn't matter what the performance would be. However this was aimed as the SFF enthusiast crowd who can and do spend more money than your everyday average PC gamer.

 

It's like people reviewing expensive wine, for most users it's out of their budget and most common folk would call it a waste of money but that is not the case for people who actually have a passion for wines or products in that price range.

 

Why are you asking the reason we don't use billet for everyday cooling products like it's some secret that only you know? It's common knowledge that it costs money and for a lot of large scale manufacturing that simply isn't something feasible to keep profits in check when handling large quantities of orders.

 

Billet Labs were not going for large scale manufacturing, they were a small company who does higher price items for bespoke builds. Not that dissimilar to high end SFF PC cases that cost upwards of $300USD for just the case alone.

 

I know the feeling you're having, it's like I'm losing brain cells talking to you.

 

You have no capability of understanding that if this product was shown to be a high performing piece of cooling and the word had spread around in the community then there was be a small yet conceivable amount of enthusiasts who would have learnt of it and therefore been tempted to purchase the product for their next build. In no way does it mean it's a waste of copper or money just because you're unable to afford it.

[Cloudhopper]

10 hours ago, LinusTech said:

I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I've never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community.

No Linus you don't anymore. 
THAT is the issue.

You lost touch, you are too tied up in your own world. People have told you in that very video that your approach to billet was wrong . 
You just dimissed any of their concerns.
You double down on WAN show, while Luke was popping eye balls and trying to nudge you in the correct direction to preserve your reputation as a "reviewer"
You ignored him and just went onto your righteous rant.

You fecked this up. 
You might have had a "long history" of meeting issues head on in the past. But you have worked long and hard to destroy that history.
You stopped listening to Luke and other confidants of yours.

That's how bad it has become. And its painfully obvious for most viewers, especially the WAN show audience.

In the past 2 years you have, unfortunately, written a long history of incidents like these that severely undermine the credibility of yourself and LMG as a whole as a reliable media outlet. 

That is what you are doing here.

[JoshuaScholar]

As for videos going out too fast.

 

I bet LMG's labs cost 1000 times Gamer's Nexus' equipment.

 

I would still trust Steve's technical reviews over LMG's always.

Doesn't that suggest a problem?

[bandainamcofan]

Just now, ScoggsUK said:

The GN piece and the others you mention are separate in my book. 

 

The two you mention are product reviews and contain both an opinion piece and review of testing data. If they tested it incorrectly then the product owners 100% should be allowed to address it and point this out to the reviewer.

 

On the opinion side/review piece they don't need to reach out.

 

For the GN piece, this is investigative journalism and it would have been the correct course of action to reach out to LMG for comments on the issues. 

IPSO suggests it isn't necessarily the case here. 

 

Quote

This is because the Editors’ Code of Practice, the set of rules which IPSO enforces, does not state that journalists must contact every individual or company before publication of every story.

If the article is reporting on factual information that is already in the public domain, such as a recent court case or comments made publicly on social media, not contacting someone before the article is published is highly unlikely to be a breach of our rules.

 

[Blademaster91]

16 minutes ago, trustmebro16 said:

cause you guys assume LMG is being run by 1 man making all the communications, admin and decisions by himself

you are assuming Linus replied to the emails himself
purposely decided to not perform the tests correctly

purposely ensure the wrong gpu was used

purposely decide to ruin a company

 

no other scenario or person was involved or was a possible cause

when in fact there is a chain of people performing actions and as he acknowledged himself, there are improvements they will be making to improve the process so these blunders dont happen again

Because Linus is in the video, i'm guessing he tested this before the video or at least made some decisions for the video, as for not performing the tests correctly or using the GPU it was made for those are all silly errors to make and shouldn't have been in the video, or corrections should have been made.

The issue with him bashing the company is that he doubled down on saying the cooler was stupid, even though he doesn't know that for a fact as the wrong GPU was used.

For that many issues to happen in the chain of people working on the video seems very unprofessional to me for how large of a company LMG is, and I'll believe when I see there are better reviews with more accurate data, people have been bringing up the accuracy of LTT videos for a long time so I'm hesitant to just believe them saying they will. 

[dynastes]

12 minutes ago, Pulpamos said:

Linus and team,

 

As with other things, when people react to things, whether reacting positively or negatively, it means they care.

 

I have watched you and your videos since I can remember, since Luke was part of the channel and you recorded videos in your garage cooling PC's with Refrigerators.

 

When I saw GN video yesterday, I though "finally someone who speaks about this!"

 

We love your channel and we want it do do great. But we also want you and the leadership team to stop, look around and make some needed course corrections.

 

We also want you to know we appreciate what you and all of your team do. Take this opportunity to self reflect and make a change with the support of the community.

 

 

THIS and nothing else. It's basically the reason why I finally created an account here and made my first post over this topic. It just seemed prudent in this situation.

 

I watch more LTT on Youtube than practically any other channel. They make the most entertaining tech videos. Period. However, the point might have come to slow down production speed or else find some other way to increase quality (aside from visuals and editing, which are always top notch). The employees seem to want that, too.

 

  

10 minutes ago, Cloudhopper said:

No Linus you don't anymore. 
THAT is the issue.

You lost touch, you are too tied up in your own world. People have told you in that very video that your approach to billet was wrong . 
You just dimissed any of their concerns.
You double down on WAN show, while Luke was popping eye balls and trying to nudge you in the correct direction to preserve your reputation as a "reviewer"
You ignored him and just went onto your righteous rant.

You fecked this up. 
You might have had a "long history" of meeting issues head on in the past. But you have worked long and hard to destroy that history.
You stopped listening to Luke and other confidants of yours.

That's how bad it has become. And its painfully obvious for most viewers, especially the WAN show audience.

In the past 2 years you have, unfortunately, written a long history of incidents like these that severely undermine the credibility of yourself and LMG as a whole as a reliable media outlet. 

That is what you are doing here.

Cannot confirm if this is true in its entirely, but @LinusTech being struck with operational blindness would at least not be very surprising at this point. One has to acknowledge that he has created a large enterprise from the ground up through hard work and dedication like only few people are capable of (I certainly could not do it and therefore have great respect for those, who can). Sure, he did not do it on his own, but was and is to this day a very significant pillar of this success.

 

Anyway, the only thing that can help operational blindness: Taking a step back and taking a good hard look at the business, listening to others that are not as involved in it (yet). Maybe the new CEOs is already in the process of helping this? Can't really say.

[Legitsu]

Just now, YZF-RX said:

You really don't get it do you, the example of the 3090ti/12900k waterblock is for old hardware but this prototype wasn't and if it was anything like the original then the performance was far from crap or worthless like you seem to be dead set on believing.

 

This was never marketed to be the answer to every single consumer, not everyone has the money to afford it. That's why linus said it was crap, because it costs a lot. However this was aimed as the SFF enthusiast crowd who can and do spend more money than your everyday average PC gamer.

 

It's like people reviewing expensive wine, for most users it's out of their budget and most common folk would call it a waste of money but that is not the case for people who actually have a passion for wines or products in that price range.

 

Why are you asking the reason we don't use billet for everyday cooling products like it's some secret that only you know? It's common knowledge that it costs money and for a lot of large scale manufacturing that simply isn't something feasible to keep profits in check when handling large quantities of orders.

 

Billet Labs were not going for large scale manufacturing, they were a small company who does higher price items for bespoke builds. Not that dissimilar to high end SFF PC cases that cost upwards of $300USD for just the case alone.

 

I know the feeling you're having, it's like I'm loosing brain cells talking to you.

 

You have no capability of understanding that if this product was shown to be a high performing piece of cooling and the word had spread around in the community then there was be a small yet conceivable amount of enthusiasts who would have learnt of it and therefore been tempted to purchase the product for their next build. In no way does it mean it's a waste of copper or money just because you're unable to afford it.

thanks for all of those faulty assumptions futher driving the point I am trying to make that you are missing 

which is this entire thing is a ridiculous farce

 

but apperently my satirical witt is either lost on you or I am not as funny as I think I am ....  either way I agree with linus product was dumb from the get go. did he handle it poorly o yes quiet badly ... does it change the fact that the product is dumber then a car made of macaroni noodles being marketed to starving nigerian children Not at all 

nobody ruined anybody here if anything all of the drama is great pr for a company that otherwise would have been forgotten by now 

[RasmusDC]

36 minutes ago, MichaelMouton said:

 

GN spent a bit over seven minutes talking about it in a recent HW News episode...

 

I think they did a fine job considering they're not as large as LMG.  They tried mixing the modmat by trying different methods of removing the factory applied print, but that was not feasible.  Eventually, they gave buyers either the options of accepting a die cast emblem and two printed cards containing corrected pinouts or actually returning their modmats.

 

Also all of this was sent out in an email to said buyers.  They didn't tell them to go watch the latest episode of HW News.  Looking at the comments of the video it also seems as though just about everyone is very happy with the resolution.

 

Thanks, Steve.

if that was the solution, then how is that bad.. Return of product, or compensation that is how this needs to be done.. i am okay with a company searching for a "fix" that might be doable for people.. 

 

But this "youtubers doing products" is a bit of a high risk thing. Linus seems to have done okay with the screwdriver. it seems to be holding up for him.

[ScoggsUK]

2 minutes ago, bandainamcofan said:

IPSO suggests it isn't necessarily the case here. 

 

 

The incorrect data in videos I agree with you get caught by this, but some of the other stuff is potentially conjecture.

 

It would have been the right thing in my book yo have reached out for comment.