Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[RadiatingLight]

3 minutes ago, Raze1990 said:

@LinusTech

After the points GN brought up i had hoped for a good response, your earlier forum post rubbed me the wrong way a bit and was a disappointment. im glad LMG chose to release a vid addressing the issues and taking valid feedback from the community and other content creators to heart and will strive to improve. from my part all is forgiven and no trust is lost. been a loyal viewer since the early days and will continue to be one in the future. i understand we are all humans with emotions and humans make mistakes. i feel a bit bad for you with some of the community being overly harsh with you, but hey thats just the internet i guess, in the end calmer minds will prevail. again kudos for the vid and best of luck to LMG with the improvements. we love you linus and want to see you continue to succeed hope you feel better soon!

Just curious, what are your thoughts about Madison's experience at LMG then?

[Amaninacity]

2 minutes ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

But based on the fact the film is easy to miss and a lot of potential buyers could also miss the film, they are right to recommend against the product. You can only blame Pwnage for this as it is their product.

 

I'll reiterate what I said in another comment, if people are interested in a product and 1 video completely puts them off and they refuse to do other research into product, that is their issue.

Then they are reviewing the product and should not hide behind “unboxing channel”. Whether you think the recommendation is correct or not is immaterial. The recommendation makes it a review in all but name, and reviews need a high standard.

[atxcyclist]

13 minutes ago, Karon said:

Maybe because linus' response was so batshit insane that Steve was flabbergasted?

And what about before Steve put out that 45 minute video? Unless Steve is an actual clairvoyant, he would have no knowledge of what Linus thought or how he would react since he never made contact with LMG.

[DeatheTech]

7 minutes ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

Regarding the Pwnage mouse issues. Steve completely misses the mark here. Short Circuit is an unboxing channel, they are not doing a deep dive into the product, so something easy to miss (thus purchasers would also miss) should absolutely be reflected in the impressions of the product. He's really clutching at straws here.

An unboxing review shouldn't be telling people whether or not to buy the thing. He literally says in the video - "When you're paying $180 for a mouse, I expect it to be the perfect mouse" and then goes on to compare it to several other mice with comparisons to their features and characteristics. How is that not a review at that point?

 

The sections of the video are "Unboxing", "Design and hand feel impressions", "Polling rate and Pwnage software", "Feet feel and applying the grip tape". "Gaming impressions and moving the sensor", and "Pricing and overall thoughts"..... sure doesn't sound like just an unboxing video.

[dwkekciej]

4 minutes ago, Amaninacity said:

I dunno. They’re making goofs about the regular running jokes in their videos, not about the situation. Again, the 69 joke was definitely out of place. The other stuff was just them presenting the apology in their style. I was fine with it, but I guess I can see why it might upset some people.

It wasn't an apology video. It was a standard LTT video. They did an intro, a segue (fake one though), then plugged LTT Store, FP, their screwdriver, threw in a 69/420 joke, and placed a very deliberate segue to Dbrand at the end. And it was monetized, with affiliate links and all. It's clear they are in crisis-mode and are not making good decisions right now. They need someone, not Linus, to stop the hemorrhaging of the LMG brand, and to put out a rational response to all of this bs, and actually take the time to reflect on what they have done over the last ~48 hours.

[Karon]

1 minute ago, atxcyclist said:

That response didn’t exist when Steve put out that 45 minute video. Unless Steve is an actual clairvoyant, he would have no knowledge of what Linus thought or how he would react; Maybe use your own brain.

You're talking about, and I'm responding to a specific part of the second video. Why are you trying to change the topic to the first video? 

[Amaninacity]

3 minutes ago, DeatheTech said:

The card performance isn't being tested on a cooler review either. The cooler is. You literally have no idea what you are talking about at this point.

The cooler performance will affect the card performance. That’s the whole reason you would use a fancy cooler. Unless I’m somehow mistaken that thermals affect the boost behavior of the gpu.

[TheSilverSpade]

I really wished Linus talked more on his childish and immature response. He clearly wasn’t sorry.

[Zaf9670]

30 minutes ago, EchoBravo498 said:

Does anyone actually know if they lost floatplane subscribers over this? I saw someone posting this in the chat but didn't know if they were just trolling or not.

The answer to that question is yes. Not because I unsubscribed but you can almost guarantee there will be others that make a "Linus response" to this news and dip out.

Whether it was substantial enough to hurt the company is the bigger question but if anything it wounded them into action.

[plane_]

Until they acknowledge the Madison situation and create a response without either: an unapolagetic tone or an ACTUAL shill for their products I have no interest in supporting them any further. I knew Linus would keep interpersonal relationships relatively under the covers, but no apology to Steve? Not even a MENTION from Colton or especially Linus/the new CEO about Madison...? Is this not just ridiculous to anyone else? They are doing the same stuff they criticize other people for while holding this holier than thou attitude.

[wanderingfool2]

2 minutes ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

But based on the fact the film is easy to miss and a lot of potential buyers could also miss the film, they are right to recommend against the product. You can only blame Pwnage for this as it is their product.

 

I'll reiterate what I said in another comment, if people are interested in a product and 1 video completely puts them off and they refuse to do other research into product, that is their issue.

Anyone who has their witts about them, upon trying the mouse that's supposed to be low friction would look to see if something is wrong by looking at the bottom carefully and seeing the protective film.  (Or you know, anyone who probably glanced at the manual would probably see that it likely has a step to remove it).

 

If people are interested in a product, one very negative video which calls into question the actual glidabily could easily put someone who's on the fence off the product.  Especially if lets say you wanted a low drag mouse and find that LTT is essentially saying it is high drag.

 

7 minutes ago, atxcyclist said:

Steve would have made contact if he wanted to tell LMG to ‘do better’, his motives here are something else.

Except over the years, I'm sure Steve has reached out.  Even the community has reached out, and still gotten the same marketing fluff that Linus keeps saying "We'll do better".  At a certain point you don't give them an opportunity.

 

 

[Mahoney]

6 minutes ago, Amaninacity said:

I don’t take issue with him doing this in public. But his failure to request comment or provide a compelling explanation for why he couldn’t was pretty shitty. He’s previously been very hard line on getting comment, and he conspicuously avoid it here. While there are circumstances where journalistic ethics don’t require you to get comment, they do still require you to acknowledge and explain why you felt you couldn’t. Especially when breaking non-public allegations. 
 

his criticism of Linus’ belief that this should all be handled in private was on point. But Linus’ criticism that he didn’t follow standard practice is valid. It would not be if Steve said “I didn’t reach out for comment because I feared x, y, or z.” Or “Nobody responded.” He didn’t do that, and it was shitty.

Does LTT ever contact a company of a product they're just about to destroy? Does that makes sense? Some of you have been acting like 10 year old fanboys these past 2 days. Like grow up

[atxcyclist]

Just now, Karon said:

You're talking about, and I'm responding to a specific part of the second video. Why are you trying to change the topic to the first video? 

Because the first video is where this started. Steve actually started this when he ignored his own standards and didn’t contact LMG for comment before the video went live. He then shuffled around in the second video trying to convince his audience and maybe even himself, that him not making contact in this instance, differently than the other exposés he’s done, was the right call.

It says a lot that he was worried about getting more information from Linus/LMG before making the video, it sets a tone that he was just out for blood, not getting all the information he could before making something public.

 

 

[IkeaGnome]

7 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

In that situation I sure as hell would take the money

I have a hard time putting words on a website and getting those words through correctly. You did a damn good job and that’s exactly what I was trying to get at. 

[PCGamer2727]

Reading through these posts over the last couple of days has been an interesting time.  I don't claim to have read them all though.  I don't have *that* much free time.

 

That being said, it is crazy how both Steve@GN and Linus/LMG are being characterized as evil by some people.

 

They are all people trying to do their jobs and live their lives.  Perhaps mistakes were made but if a positive outcome comes out of this then I think it is all good for the community.

 

I would never want this as my career where every mistake I ever made was laid bare for millions of people to see and comment on.

[theRockyRay]

1 minute ago, plane_ said:

Until they acknowledge the Madison situation and create a response without either: an unapolagetic tone or an ACTUAL shill for their products I have no interest in supporting them any further. I knew Linus would keep interpersonal relationships relatively under the covers, but no apology to Steve? Not even a MENTION from Colton or especially Linus/the new CEO about Madison...? Is this not just ridiculous to anyone else? They are doing the same stuff they criticize other people for while holding this holier than thou attitude.

2 minutes ago, plane_ said:

Until they acknowledge the Madison situation and create a response without either: an unapolagetic tone or an ACTUAL shill for their products I have no interest in supporting them any further. I knew Linus would keep interpersonal relationships relatively under the covers, but no apology to Steve? Not even a MENTION from Colton or especially Linus/the new CEO about Madison...? Is this not just ridiculous to anyone else? They are doing the same stuff they criticize other people for while holding this holier than thou attitude.

What's the Madison situation? I know she left after being a Social Media Coordinator. I didn't know there was an issue.

[Amaninacity]

1 minute ago, TheSilverSpade said:

I really wished Linus talked more on his childish and immature response. He clearly wasn’t sorry.

He looked like he was about to cry. And he probably was instructed to simply say the reply was wrong and to otherwise not discuss it lest he get defensive. There might have even been scrapped takes where he discussed it and it fucked the tone. He said he was wrong, started to get defensive, and reeled himself back in.

 

His apology seemed like he was sorry but also he’s still mad at some of the specifics of how this was handled and has blown out of proportion. If you’ve ever been in a big relationship fight, you can probably relate to the basic emotion. (Even though if this is that, it’s fully behind the scenes. Wouldn’t shock me, though.)

[ItsASpider]

3 minutes ago, TexZeTech said:

This is a bad take, I do not believe this was Steve's intent and I doubly think he wouldn't be happy about it. The general view of Steve (what I hear effectively in his video) is "Can you just do better please?"

I agree with most or even all of what Steve said in principle and enjoy watching GN, having said that, Billet did tell LTT (according to LTT) that their watercooler "should work with 4090" and that's some context that is being left out of Steve's original video (which frankly makes imo kinda a big difference on why they went with a 4090, Steve's video now makes it look like they went against Billet's specs when they didn't). If Billet hadn't tested that their cooler worked with it, they just should have said no in the first place. Doesn't change anything else about the shitty situation though, but there are other moments where context is weirdly being left out or some things are misrepresented (another example is the first graph to proof that they don't retest for every video being a video explicitly about comparing to data from a previous video to their new data, there were plenty of examples for this, so why was that even there?)

 

Or his seemingly inconsistent stance on when the team would find odd data that it should go back and retest it or check their data (and again, this is a very valid complaint), but then complaining about how LTT found their data in the 7900X3D review to be inconsistent with other outlets and contacting AMD about it was the wrong move because they shouldn't care about what other outlets were saying nor what AMD had to say and should have just published it. That makes no sense. Especially since the GN video then proceeds to mute the review video (but letting the images play out further) and speaking over the part where they talked about how LTT and AMD came to the conclusion that their CPU was in fact defected.

 

All the praise to Steve for putting these issues that the community has raised for a while now finally in a spotlight, but his own video has plenty of issues of its own in regards to accuracy and context.

[TheSilverSpade]

1 minute ago, Amaninacity said:

He looked like he was about to cry. And he probably was instructed to simply say the reply was wrong and to otherwise not discuss it lest he get defensive. There might have even been scrapped takes where he discussed it and it fucked the tone. He said he was wrong, started to get defensive, and reeled himself back in.

 

His apology seemed like he was sorry but also he’s still mad at some of the specifics of how this was handled and has blown out of proportion. If you’ve ever been in a big relationship fight, you can probably relate to the basic emotion. (Even though if this is that, it’s fully behind the scenes. Wouldn’t shock me, though.)

Man idk I really want to believe it. But I just can’t shake the feeling that this is all an act.

I guess Ima just wait until I see changes.

[Zaf9670]

54 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

You said this like it's a positive, but I'd argue that if this is the case this is really no different than the Colleen Ballinger ukelele apology (albiet less funny). If your apology involves an attempt to alienate the people criticizing you then it's hard to take you at your word that you want to do better.

  I responded to someone else with similar criticism. I agree that it wasn't helpful. My way with words is about as great as Linus at times.

35 minutes ago, Zaf9670 said:

That's why I said "probably" since I don't know as well. There's never going to be a perfect apology but... misplaced ads, jokes, etc. are core to almost all the videos. Someone may have thought "we can't go full corporate on the response because our audience isn't corporate" or that's how I view it.

Do I think it helped? No. But it was at the target audience.

[plane_]

1 minute ago, theRockyRay said:

 

 

She went on a huge tweet spree about working conditions there. I am not the type to just blindly believe this stuff- but it deserves acknowledgement... yeah? Like, even if this is all false, at least SAY that, have the balls to say something. "Muh... m-muh the thing is........ she could file a claim or bring legal into this!!" was his original replay which was just painful to read. The fact that he didn't acknowledge it, nor did anyone else, is just disappointing.

[Iseez]

I've been following LTT for a while and the GN video was kind of wild, for a while I have noticed that in general, the number of errors and things that need an editor note for clarification is huge.

I've always taken all the LTT videos as entertainment and to keep me updated on the tech industry. I don’t usually take LTT videos a serious thing and I started consuming Linus content because of his goofy personality. However, I think that If they are going to start making more serious testing videos they should also start making more serious videos to showcase that.

 

I have never really been a GN or Steve fan, but I can agree with almost 100% of the things he said which is kind of concerning given the fact that he showed a huge number of examples of LTT being just wrong, which makes me wonder if Steve made the video because he took personal the clip he showed at the beginning of the video. Clearly, he has known for a while that things aren’t properly done at LMG and has had problems with that for a while but he let those things slip for a lot of time, until he took it personal. Which I also think talks a lot about him.

 

[WallacEngineering]

1 minute ago, atxcyclist said:

Because the first video is where this started. Steve actually started this when he ignored his own standards and didn’t contact LMG for comment before the video went live.

He didn't shiffle anything around, nor did he do anything wrong or different. In fact he was impartial to LMG. He didn't contact them first because plenty of others have already tried to bring the concerns to the company's attention and were flat-out ignored.

 

Also, Steve always calls a company who is f***ing up out in public, like he did with Asus and the whole AM5 MotherBoard thing recently. Hes treating LMG like any other company and thats called being impartial.

 

No matter how you look at it, GN made the right call with bringing it to the public's attention. There is no need nor any reason to put any of the blame here on Steve or GN.

 

LMG screwed up and has been screwing up for some time now. Get over it, nobody is perfect. They hurt their own reputation by allowing this to happen in the first place.

[justin one]

the only thing linus is sorry about is that this all blew up in his face 

 

[atxcyclist]

2 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Except over the years, I'm sure Steve has reached out.  Even the community has reached out, and still gotten the same marketing fluff that Linus keeps saying "We'll do better".  At a certain point you don't give them an opportunity.

 

 

Steve is caught-up in his own self-congratulation, he’s gotten a big head. He believes that he is the tech watchdog, and while he can make that claim when he’s consistent in his own process, he wasn’t here.

Bottom line: He has contacted every other entity he has flamed like this, some that have stolen potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars from customers in the tech space, and he won’t send even one email in this instance?
 

It’s actual hypocrisy, and I’m not convinced of his motives being purely objective.