Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[UncleFunkle]

2 minutes ago, NorKris said:

where is the dislike button when we need it

I believe people in this thread are using the laughter reaction for that

[Middcore]

7 minutes ago, zeroality said:

3) Damn the new videos are being disliked to hell. 

 

The good news for Linus is that YouTube didn't listen to him about bringing back the dislike count.

[Monolithic]

Just now, ColonelSupremePizza said:

To me, it would show that multiple people had reviewed it and chosen the words carefully to ensure the best outcome possible with such a statement. Would it be satisfactory? I doubt it, but it would at least show that it was something done with more people involved than Linus just free firing from the hip.

 

I hate PR damage control pieces as much as the next person, but EVERY time a person at a company tries to pull what Linus did and does everything to push the blame, ignore the actual issues, and sweep things under the rug while trying to twist the narrative, it's ended in disaster. Linus SHOULD NOT have the power to make and post such atrocious takes in answering serious allegations WITHOUT people reviewing it first. The focus should be on maintaining the brand or image reputation at all cost.

No to mention a PR person would have stated, "We haven't heard back from Billet yet"

[New_Poster_Old_Viewer]

I am a long time viewer of LTT, GN, JayzTwoCents, etc.. Been building / using PCs for 20+ years. This whole situation is very embarrassing and shows how sites and the community have changed over time - in my post I'm going to ignore the error reports / corrections and ignore the auction issue of the block and concentrate on just one thing and that's the review of the block....

 

The billet lab block is a new product, and its a prototype, from watching the video it seems to be designed for advanced users and those that can plan / read - it was clearly meant for specific motherboards and was for a 3090Ti. And yet in the video LTT decides to test the product using a watercooling Noob (they mention this in the first 30 seconds of the video).

 

Anyone with experience would know that water cooling requires the correct components and planning, I've built many water cooled PCs and there is always a massive planning stage - nothing for example ever lines up (even with a distro plate there is always some component thats in slightly the wrong place and requires bends / adapters). The waterblock for the GPU normally requires many many thermal pads to be cut to the correct size and installed in the right place to ensure correct contact with the components on the GPU - for example EKWB waterblocks normally have a combination of 0.5mm, 1.0mm and 2.0mm thermal pads that all have to go in the right place if you want it to work. Anyone with any experience knows this and prepares / does things properly, a block for a different manufacturer of a card or different version of a card (3090 vs 4090 for example) just isn't going to work.

 

So we have:

- a niche, complex production

- being installed on the wrong motherboard and the wrong graphics card

- by someone that has never done water cooling before

- led by someone (linus) who appears to make jokes about the whole process

- they cant even get the correct RAM for the board

- they decide to cut the board heatsinks to make things fit rather than plan the testing properly

 

So the questions on this:

- were they really so under prepared for the review that they couldn't get the right hardware in place to test properly with an experienced builder?

- or did they set this whole thing up to fail from the start for the entertainment and the views?

 

My view on the answer... #2 this was a setup from the start for the entertainment value / monetization, LTT / LMG is not a tech review site (focus on the T) it is primarily an entertainment group that focusses on the M (media). To confirm this just watch the WAN show where Linus says he cant justify $500 to review a product properly, how can you trust a company to do a tech review of a product when they don't want to spend the $ to do it properly?

 

 

[Vilacom]

1 minute ago, Rhino16 said:

A Rolex would be a better purchase as it wouldn’t become obsolete in a few years. Might even hold its value. I thought of it earlier like buying a sports car vs a minivan, but the sports car can’t go any faster than the minivan. Spending more, and losing more value over time. Your example is still fine though, I’m just bored and thinking too much.

You’re not wrong, it was just another absurdly expensive product that at its absolute best does the same thing as the much much cheaper version.  

[PandaBumpin]

22 hours ago, LinusTech said:

We are using this, like everything else, to continue to drive ourselves to do better. Got some really exciting stuff in the holster

 

A really good one - and the video where I actually FOUND the 3090 Ti that we were supposed to send back to Billet... grrr... - is kind of an undercover boss vid where I go and work in our logistics department for the day. This is the kind of thing I'm finding more time for in the new role and is already making a difference to some of our practices. 

I thought you/Luke previously said your perspective on process changes in the past is part of the reason things are so dysfunctional? 

[Monolithic]

1 minute ago, PandaSasquatch said:

I'm going to point out the most glaring problem with what you said....

 

Linus is not LMG and clearly did not personally handle every bit of the communication between LMG and Billet Labs.

Then why is he responding to it here and accepting responsibility?

[jos]

6 minutes ago, rav007 said:

With labs they are positioning themselves into the data space, not just for entertainment. In that space the scrutiny is different because it goes from anecdotes and opinions to facts. Misrepresentation of facts ruins reputations and gets people fired. Its a tough switch for an entertainment channel to make into fact based content, but if they are going full bore, there is almost no margin for error. Errors are supposed to be an anomaly, not a trend.

They have mentioned the labs are not fully functional yet, process are being set up, so at a transition time.l, Errors are expected. In this case a large company is trying something new. Everyone on the other side(labs) are new to LMG. It is new for Linus as well. He is used to long rants and entertainment. So there will be learning curve and need procedures and steps to make things right. At this phase, mistakes are quite common. What I would suggest for LMG is may be spin off labs to seperate channel.

[jitteryzeitgeist]

God listening to people who have clearly never been involved in business talk about it like they're borrowing shit from their friends is painful.

[dustypaws]

1 minute ago, Saeumii said:

gonna respond to this here bc this strikes me as a bad faith take from someone who's just trying to hate on ltt and i have no interest in directly engaging with that type of attitude.

they mistakenly auctioned off the prototype for charity, presumably bc they viewed it as a unique item that someone would want. the only reason they said that no one should buy it is bc you can get much cheaper coolers with the same performance.

no, they shouldn't have auctioned it off in the first place, but their logic and reasoning for this situation seems pretty clear to me

 

this incident seems to have just brought the haters out of the woodworks

Nah mate...it's just honest disappointment. Disappointed by somebody who preaches higher moral standards on any occasion he gets.

[aka473]

1 minute ago, Saeumii said:

gonna respond to this here bc this strikes me as a bad faith take from someone who's just trying to hate on ltt and i have no interest in directly engaging with that type of attitude.

they mistakenly auctioned off the prototype for charity, presumably bc they viewed it as a unique item that someone would want. the only reason they said that no one should buy it is bc you can get much cheaper coolers with the same performance.

no, they shouldn't have auctioned it off in the first place, but their logic and reasoning for this situation seems pretty clear to me

 

this incident seems to have just brought the haters out of the woodworks

Not disagreeing with you beyond saying that a charity auction is in fact a sale, and therefore it was "sold". Even though the proceeds of said auction/sale goes to charity.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

24 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

@ImorallySourcedElectrons still think HUB over reacted with their Tweet?

I say yes because I still see it as a public reaction to what's basically a private remark.

 

But as to this drama, I think Steve/GN dropped really low, and this is really no better than political attack ads in many ways. And I sincerely hope Tim and Linus have the necessary emotional and social support right now, because this just turned into an internet witch hunt, and everyone here shouting all outrageous shit like "LTT should go bankrupt" has absolutely no clue what they're saying and how it arrives with the people who feel responsible for this series of events. And the lack of understanding for Linus's response after said series of events demonstrates how emotionally immature many people are about such things.

[jitteryzeitgeist]

Just now, jos said:

They have mentioned the labs are not fully functional yet, process are being set up, so at a transition time.l, Errors are expected. In this case a large company is trying something new. Everyone on the other side(labs) are new to LMG. It is new for Linus as well. He is used to long rants and entertainment. So there will be learning curve and need procedures and steps to make things right. At this phase, mistakes are quite common. What I would suggest for LMG is may be spin off labs to seperate channel.

I expect mistakes to happen.

 

How does the lab being new justify them not having a checklist and making sure DLSS was turned off on the Cyberpunk benchmark for the 4090, and nobody noticing it being 300% higher than the 3090ti?

[rav007]

1 minute ago, JoshuaScholar said:

Meh.  Linus surrendered too much to the youtube algorithm, and he thought no one would care if he trashed some kids who don't have a big-company product.

 

USUALLY he seems to have better principles and instincts than this.

 

I'm not convinced that thoroughly trained businessmen do a good job either.  

I put it down to this being above opinions and entertainment which is LMGs usual space. Now they've gone into the data domain which is based more on facts than opinions, yet they are trying to blur a line that refuses to be blurred. 

 

I too thought he was usually well principled even if I didnt agree with him. But if he doubles down on poor data approaches and lack of quality control, he won't recover in the data domain. 

[Skipple]

1 minute ago, jitteryzeitgeist said:

God listening to people who have clearly never been involved in business talk about it like they're borrowing shit from their friends is painful.

Are you part of the tech media? How is it typically handled?

[ZombieMan762]

11 minutes ago, mnxmfan said:

Then don't review the performance.

 

Linus didn't do that.  He reviewed it, and he got it MAJORLY wrong.  That video shouldn't exist, or should have been fixed before.  It can still come to the same conclusion, but at least get the review RIGHT if you are going to do it, because at least you can objectively say "yes, the product works, but no we don't think it's worth the money".

 

Instead, LTT looks really, really dumb here.  Over a $500 reshoot.

 

What's disturbing about that attitude is Linus is presuming he knows what is best for his viewers. People like to build PC's with parts that don't make financial sense. Linus has made a name for himself with ridiculous builds that don't make financial sense such as the $100,000 desk PC video they just did. So, it's ok for Linus to make money off producing content on products that don't make financial sense but thinks his viewers don't need to know if a product even works or not because he had already made up his mind no one should buy the water block so it didn't even deserve using the right parts in the review. Just pure arrogance and disregard for everyone involved from Billet Labs to viewers. 

[PandaSquawk]

9 minutes ago, jitteryzeitgeist said:

Anytime you want to have a discussion instead of repeated attempts to twist yourself in knots with rules lawyering the hell out of grammar you let me know, sport.

Sure thing champ.

[jitteryzeitgeist]

Just now, Skipple said:

Are you part of the tech media? How is it typically handled?

No, I'm someone who does testing for a living, and that includes needing to deal with a ton of companies IP and how their entire backends work.  Big big companies.

 

What do you do?

[NorKris]

the LLT vid is soon GN most watched.. or prob ending on a strong 2nd

[Thaldor]

5 minutes ago, mnxmfan said:

Instead, LTT looks really, really dumb here.  Over a $500 reshoot.

The best part of that is that there's a tech channel that often underlines that putting $500 GPU into "customers" PC because theirs is broken is literally nothing to them because that is why they have sponsors and they easily make that money with the videos (Salazar).

 

And then we literally have the BIGGEST tech YT channel whining that spending $100, $200 or even $500 more for a video to make it PROPERLY is unbearable and expecting them to do it is unthinkable and they rather fuck up another company over it than just either be transparent and say they fucked up and say that they cannot pull any standing conclusions from their fucked up testing or they just don't publish the video.

[HiTechLowSpec]

35 minutes ago, BlackSmokeDMax said:

 

Eh, fair enough.

 

Though it also allows damage control to start early. And in some cases as you've mentioned, that is warranted. In this case I think any damage control would have been bad for this community.

Is that the point. To have the gotcha' moment rather than someone being informed of a problem so that a resolution can be made quickly? Perhaps this was just a corporate screw-up that didn't even need to be a video...but we can't let that happen. Ready, Fire, AIM!!!!!

[Monolithic]

5 minutes ago, New_Poster_Old_Viewer said:

I am a long time viewer of LTT, GN, JayzTwoCents, etc.. Been building / using PCs for 20+ years. This whole situation is very embarrassing and shows how sites and the community have changed over time - in my post I'm going to ignore the error reports / corrections and ignore the auction issue of the block and concentrate on just one thing and that's the review of the block....

 

The billet lab block is a new product, and its a prototype, from watching the video it seems to be designed for advanced users and those that can plan / read - it was clearly meant for specific motherboards and was for a 3090Ti. And yet in the video LTT decides to test the product using a watercooling Noob (they mention this in the first 30 seconds of the video).

 

Anyone with experience would know that water cooling requires the correct components and planning, I've built many water cooled PCs and there is always a massive planning stage - nothing for example ever lines up (even with a distro plate there is always some component thats in slightly the wrong place and requires bends / adapters). The waterblock for the GPU normally requires many many thermal pads to be cut to the correct size and installed in the right place to ensure correct contact with the components on the GPU - for example EKWB waterblocks normally have a combination of 0.5mm, 1.0mm and 2.0mm thermal pads that all have to go in the right place if you want it to work. Anyone with any experience knows this and prepares / does things properly, a block for a different manufacturer of a card or different version of a card (3090 vs 4090 for example) just isn't going to work.

 

So we have:

- a niche, complex production

- being installed on the wrong motherboard and the wrong graphics card

- by someone that has never done water cooling before

- led by someone (linus) who appears to make jokes about the whole process

- they cant even get the correct RAM for the board

- they decide to cut the board heatsinks to make things fit rather than plan the testing properly

 

So the questions on this:

- were they really so under prepared for the review that they couldn't get the right hardware in place to test properly with an experienced builder?

- or did they set this whole thing up to fail from the start for the entertainment and the views?

 

My view on the answer... #2 this was a setup from the start for the entertainment value / monetization, LTT / LMG is not a tech review site (focus on the T) it is primarily an entertainment group that focusses on the M (media). To confirm this just watch the WAN show where Linus says he cant justify $500 to review a product properly, how can you trust a company to do a tech review of a product when they don't want to spend the $ to do it properly?

 

 

You are talking about a person who built pipes in his swimming pool to cool his personal servers at home.

 

He had the ability to do a good review on the product and just chose not too. He could have easily told Billet he didn't want to review it until it was more user friendly, and allowed someone else who could review it in a manner that would have showcased the products abilities correctly.

[Taf the Ghost]

28 minutes ago, Abraxaz said:

You have to realise how many people Linus has working under him.

 

Do you tell the CEO every time you fuck up?

The actual team that would have known about the issue with the CPU Cooler directly works with Linus on a regular basis. It was a Teams message away. Though Linus really didn't need to be contacted.

[jitteryzeitgeist]

Just now, PandaSasquatch said:

Sure thing champ.

No see, I clearly meant sport as in soccer. 

 

See?  It sounds stupid when other people do it.

[Saeumii]

1 minute ago, aka473 said:

Not disagreeing with you beyond saying that a charity auction is in fact a sale, and therefore it was "sold". Even though the proceeds of said auction/sale goes to charity.

i think distinguishing between a charity and a sale is important in this case. "sale" implies personal profits, i.e greed. "charity" implies goodwill, i.e generosity. these haters will take any opportunity they can to dogpile linus, whether or not he deserves it, so i think it's important to not feed into that toxicity