Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[ScoggsUK]

4 minutes ago, ILikeHardware said:

Sure, here you go:
 

Billet never sent them a quote, they told him they would like their $XXXX product back. So there you go, bud.

Fair do's, they didn't get a qoute. Okay he can apologise for getting that wrong if that makes everyone feel better.

[Leksi T]

Just now, Ooooffff8732 said:

floatplane subs dropping every second rn

OK, It's this kinda crap that gets me riled and feeling I need to leave before I lose any objectivity.  How is this helping? "Oh yay! Floatplane is falling!" Grow up.

[Caphenning]

4 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

It's not about "faking" anything, it's that people on the internet are vultures and will descend on anything Linus says and make it an even bigger issue. It's already happened, people (myself included) are tearing Linus's response to bits.

 

YouTuber apologies are damn near impossible to get right, and in recent memory the only times I can remember them working is when the person given the apology doesn't seem like the person in the wrong to begin with.

Steve pointed out the big issue that brings “faking” into question, and that is his business relationship with Noctua. Whether misrepresentation of their product in a positive view, or misrepresentation of Billet’s product in a negative light, individually bring a question to “Trust me bro”, and when combined make it it exponentially worse. Linus has boarded the Greed Train, and it’s it’s not going to take him anywhere good.

[The_Poff]

1 minute ago, Ooooffff8732 said:

floatplane subs dropping every second rn

Idolizing entertainment and Tech Informers to the point where you have to leave a good service over a mistake is indicative of a real societal issue. I can handle them not being perfect, because I never thought they were. 

[VisibleXela]

6 minutes ago, OuterMarker said:

The Billet Labs situation has distracted many from the most important part of Steve's criticism... the quality of LTT videos. 

 

I am way more concerned about the poor quality of the testing, the many mistakes that are allowed in videos, and the overall rushed and unprepared nature of some of the shoots (the Billet Labs video itself).

 

Steve hit the nail on the head when he said the root cause is the self-imposed deadlines and upload schedule. Linus has to decide what the purpose of each video is. Is it a review? Is it showing off an ambitious tech project? Or is it mindless tech entertainment? Right now, I don't think they are doing any of those videos well.

 

If the goal is to be a review video, accuracy needs to be the number one priority. If that means you delay a video or pull a video down, so be it. An asterisk is not good enough. Sometimes the corrections are on the screen so briefly that I have to go back and pause the video. Who knows how many I missed when I wasn't looking at the screen.  And how can I expect to trust your conclusion if so many facts are corrected days or weeks after you recorded the video?

 

If it's an ambitious tech project (like showing off an expensive water block that looks cool). Put the product in its best light. Most of us are never going to play with those halo projects. You are our chance to see what they can actually do. And I really don't want to hear, "We aren't going to treat this product with respect because we don't think you should buy it." If that was the case, we would all be gaming on a 5-year-old CPU and last gen card. Sometimes we like to splurge on our hobby rather than only buy stuff with the best performance-to-dollar ratio. Wouldn't that suck if you couldn't find a serious review of a Porsche Taycan because the only youtube review of it said, "A Honda Civic will get you to work just as fast and is cheaper, so rather than taking this Taycan to a track, we are going to see how many bags of groceries it can carry."

 

But my biggest issue is Linus's refusal to do anything that will hurt his channel's performance when he knows there is a mistake. I get it, youtube crushes your video if you delete it and re-upload a similar one a few hours later, but that's the price you pay for your current level of quality control and workflow. If you don't want to delete videos, give your writers and production crew more time. You would call out a tech company that knowingly shipped a defective product, so why shouldn't your viewers treat you the same? It is completely unacceptable to build a media company that can't afford to remove a video or miss an upload if the video is full of errors

Excellent post. LMG needs to refocus, at the bare minimum, and figure out what parts of LTT are important and what aren't.

[FadedSpark]

Just now, atxcyclist said:

 

And you are not who I'm referring to, because you've actually been here. You've at least taken initiative to have an account and show some interaction with this community prior to yesterday, these new joins don't have that, so I am going to view their opinion and criticisms as more of a dogpile than long-time viewer criticism.

That's a pretty rough standard though. I understand the sentiment, don't get me wrong, but the average individual doesn't use a forum, or discord etc to engage in things they aren't actively passionate about until they have a reason to.

 

I'm not talking your favorite hobby, anime, game etc, I'm talking products, brands etc. Most people just happily consume until something affects them personally. Whether it be materially, or emotionally.

 

This is that moment for a lot of them.

 

Those voices are valid. And while I hope they contribute useful discourse and not just troll blindly (because that contributes less than nothing.) They're definitely welcome imo.

 

 

[Lagonas]

1 minute ago, harls said:

 

 

Yes and he did neither of them. 

We have already showed you multiple times that he did. You can ignore them, but that does not mean it did not happen.

[BlackSmokeDMax]

4 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Yet we don't know what the cost of employment really is either, given that Linus refuses to let his employees form a union but wants his staff to rush out a video every day regardless of errors in the videos.

 

For the record he does NOT refuse to let them start a union, and has even commented multiple times that he definitely could not stop that at all where they are located.

 

His stance on that has always been he has wanted to make sure that the working conditions were good enough so that the workers did not feel the need to start a union.

 

edit: and by the way, my comments in this thread have all been anti-LMG. So, I'm not one of the defenders of the faith in here.

[harls]

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Yet we don't know what the cost of employment really is either, given that Linus refuses to let his employees form a union but wants his staff to rush out a video every day regardless of errors in the videos.

Linus does not refuse to let his employees form a union. There is nothing he can do to stop them if they choose to.  All he can do is try to create a workplace that makes them not choose to do so. 

[atxcyclist]

5 minutes ago, thebakerman said:

I have too, and it sucks. It does. And there's a fair bit of it here, too. What I don't think is this is an accurate representation of the contributors of new members as a whole.

 

I think you have somewhat unrealistic expectations. The vast vast majority of the revenue-generating community behind LMG will have zero reason to join this forum for any purpose whatsoever. I solely interact with LMG on YouTube, through my subscriptions. I do watch videos usually daily, I also watch WAN on VOD after it airs, and I have bought merchandise from the company, which already makes me a tiny tiny majority of the overall viewership.

 

However, I frankly have zero time or inclination to contribute to a tech support/PC building forum in any capacity -- I work as a software engineer in big tech, and I have literally no willingness whasoever to "talk shop" with strangers on the internet after I've already done my daily 8-12 hours of yelling at computers. In an ideal world, I would get my one video per day that meets the expected level of quality and I would never have to set foot in this forum at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure you are all absolutely fine people, but I couldn't care less about most of the discussions in here.

 

You can be a perfectly cromulent member of the audience who is years-long a regular viewer of LMG content who even wishes to support the efforts of the people who make the stuff they watch without wanting to end up in a community about that creator. I am not even at a regular viewer of GN. I just thought that him voicing some of the concerns about the direction of LMG would definitely create a discussion here where I feel like my concerns, which would normally be downvoted or ignored by the community at large in any other scenario, could contribute to the discussion that was started.

And regardless of your involvement in the community outside the forum, the only indication here has of your involvement with it is from less than a dozen hours ago when you joined here. That's just the reality, there is a near zero barrier to entry in this forum, so Occam's Razor and all that, for the people joining in the last 24 hours and only being in this drama thread. And truthfully there are pages of examples of people joining and just making wild, inflammatory, and essentially worthless angry rants, I would be a fool to take those seriously.

[PandaSquawk]

8 minutes ago, VisibleXela said:

Can we explore this alternate reality?

 

Billet sends LMG the prototype

LMG doesn't give it back

LMG auctions it off at LTX for charity

Billet continues to ask for it back

LMG tells Billet "sorry we don't have it"

The Gamers Nexus video goes live

Linus sends Billet an email offering to pay them back, but hasn't gotten a response yet (at the time)

 

Why would Linus think the situation was resolved at that point? If I kick you in the shin and tell everyone that you were ok with it because I texted you to say "I'm sorry," but you literally haven't even responded yet, doesn't that make me an asshole?

 

I'm just exploring the hypothetical you put down here, that's all - your idea makes Linus look way way worse.

Or maybe let's make this a more factual timeline, and break away from Ragelandium.

1. Billet Labs sends their prototype to LMG for review

2. LMG does said review

3. Billet asks LMG for the prototype back (this is likely a reminder of a previous agreement)

4. LMG staff responds saying they plan to ship it back shortly

5. LMG then reaches out weeks later on Friday August 10th, saying they unintentionally sold it at auction for charity

6. Billet responds angrily 30 minutes later saying the block was expensive and it's not ok LMG sold it

7. LMG responds to Billet via email on Monday August 14th (after the GN video went live)

[harls]

Just now, Lagonas said:

We have already showed you multiple times that he did. You can ignore them, but that does not mean it did not happen.

OK boss you got me.  words no longer mean what they used to and he said he reached an agreement before the GN video went up.  He just did it in code instead of english.  

 

[Shatterhand]

14 minutes ago, ScoggsUK said:

I asked you a pretty simple question, please post a qoute from Linus where he lied. He has like one or two posts on this thread one of which is pinned. 

 

Please can you qoute where he lied?

 

Quote

 

...

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).

...

 

 

Said he already agreed as a critique towards GN, while he contacted Billet only after the initial GN video went up.

So he lied.

 

Don't see how it can be so hard for you to understand this...

 

[Drazil100]

14 minutes ago, ColonelSupremePizza said:

No, but he should fire himself after fanning the flames and causing more damage to the brand and image of LMG. Just saying, he is still very much running the company and the CEO position is 1000000000000000000% honorary.

Linus has stated many times on WAN show that the company is too big for him to manage which lines up PERFECTLY with what Steve said about LMG. The CEO position is not honorary. While Linus still controls the direction of the company the new CEO will basically do all the actual hard part of figuring out how to organize the company and getting the departments communicating correctly and efficiently to get there.

What happened to Billet Labs and the quality control issues with their videos Steve mentioned were not an act of malice on Linus's part but an act of incompetence. It will take time before we see the influence of Terren's leadership but I suspect things will improve in a year or so. (It took half a year before we started seeing the effects of the new YouTube CEO) 

[VisibleXela]

1 minute ago, The_Poff said:

Idolizing entertainment and Tech Informers to the point where you have to leave a good service over a mistake is indicative of a real societal issue. I can handle them not being perfect, because I never thought they were. 

My doctor prescribed me amoxicillin for my ADHD by mistake, I'm sad to hear I can't find a different doctor over this. Guess I have no choice but to take the antibiotics.

[JeffreyLF]

3 minutes ago, Leksi T said:

OK, It's this kinda crap that gets me riled and feeling I need to leave before I lose any objectivity.  How is this helping? "Oh yay! Floatplane is falling!" Grow up.

How many did they have before?

Edit: I have realized I quoted the wrong post. I'm not cheering for this but I am curious how many they've lost.

[Skipple]

4 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

given that Linus refuses to let his employees form a union

This isn't true, it's not legal, and it's not what Linus has said.

[Orthusaku]

12 minutes ago, SimonShipperd said:

I am in no way defending Linus, LTT, or attacking GN. And I've explained in previous posts that being a victim does not automatically absolve you from any and all responsability. Sure Linus trashed the product, but even without new testing his original point stands by itself. A waterblock that costs 800€ for a last-gen card, and by the time it would be released probably 2 gen old card, is not something anyone should buy.

I think by know he knows all to well what is happening and what needs to happen. Perhaps people should need to give him the time to sort things out. This place is pretty neutral and factual (except for the troll accounts that registered today). But he personally and his lifes work is being bombarded and attacked for the 2nd time in 2 months. I understand his reaction towards GN since there is at least a partial truth in it. GN went out of his way to setup a meeting with Newegg, but now he doesn't even bother to pick up the phone to get at least the other part of the story? Anyway, my point is not to attack GN or Billet in any way.

You mean like his CPU pillow that is not something anyone should buy per his own words?

[Leksi T]

The Union issue. Off topic. 

 

There's already alot that GN pointed out that needs addressing. The waters here are muddy enough as it is without throwing more mud.

[tmck]

23 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.

@LinusTech As a person who has been creating IT media in Poland for almost a decade, I organized events (for 200-250 people from the community at most - nothing compared to your activity, which I have always admired). I'm writing this so that you don't take my short statement as unfounded. In fact, in part you remind me of my former bosses, and in another part, I literally wish they were guided by the principles you undoubtedly follow. As I saw on the subscribe list yesterday that GN had posted some new LTT video I literally thought a year has passed and someone is trying to reheat an old chop. Why? Why?

 

After nearly an hour of video and reading your response... I'm not even mad. I'm just disappointed. GN has prepared a very data-packed piece and your response is like a human-alien conversation. Data or moral dilemmas vs semantics? No communication with the company that provided you with the prototype? You don't need to know everything about every LMG slip-up or error, but you signed this answer. I'm trying to understand your reaction. I think it's a very emotional reaction. For me personally, addressing problems as comments on YT or even editing the description / video is insufficient - especially in the context of launching Labs. As a rule, I don't look lower than the like button on YT, because I often find there either only SEO of the video author or WhatsApp spam.

 

However, I hope that the two of you will finally talk to GN somewhere normally outside the Internet. I understand where both sides are coming from, but it's not healthy for anyone.

[AamirA]

Jeez. I've never seen the forum get this much interaction.

[ImorallySourcedElectrons]

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Yet we don't know what the cost of employment really is either

We kind of do, that number is pretty consistent across most industries and countries, I went for $90 to $100 instead of $80 to $90 (as is usually the case) because property in Vancouver is extremely expensive. But these are numbers you just kind of know if you've ever been in any sort of project management position, and it's also why companies like Autodesk and Adobe get away with charging that much for their software. It's quite good value if you consider the cost per hour of an employee.

 

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

given that Linus refuses to let his employees form a union but wants his staff to rush out a video every day regardless of errors in the videos.

Interesting interpretation of "I feel as if I failed as owner if the employees feel the need to form a union".

[Orthusaku]

2 minutes ago, PandaSasquatch said:

Or maybe let's make this a more factual timeline, and break away from Ragelandium.

1. Billet Labs sends their prototype and 3090ti to LMG for review

2. LMG does said review with incorrect hardware

3. Billet asks LMG for the prototype back (this is likely a reminder of a previous agreement)

4. LMG staff responds saying they plan to ship it back shortly

5. LMG then reaches out weeks later on Friday August 10th, saying they unintentionally sold it at auction for charity

6. Billet responds angrily 30 minutes later saying the block was expensive and it's not ok LMG sold it

7. LMG responds to Billet via email on Monday August 14th (after the GN video went live)

Corrected that for you

[SamuthNBS]

I registered here after watching the video as I feel like this discussion is important, and as someone who religiously watches LMG content I really should have signed up sooner, but here I am.

I understand why people are upset by the stuff in the video, I understand why people are upset by some of the clips of Linus responding on the WAN show. However, as someone who works in the media, it's VITAL to remember that you can always scour hours of videos to find someone saying what you want them to say. I don't think that GN are trying to be malicious or trying to make LInus look bad, but they needed clips to back up their points and they found them. I bet if you looked for a clip of Linus saying that he's spent loads of time and money to ensure his staff are happy, his content is accurate, his relationships with 3rd parties are good... they'll be easy to find. So we see a clip of Linus explaining his logic behind not reshooting a video, but how many times did Linus make the opposite decision and as a result isn't featured in that video?

I work in live broadcasting and it's a relatively small world so we mostly know, or know of, each other. Most people are incredibly skilled and know their job inside out but on every single job, every single day, one of these highly skilled professionals makes a mistake so stupid and so simple that it could entirely ruin the event - and I'm talking about things like the world cup final, not daytime TV. My point is that in every company people make mistakes. Some of them are really awful - some even fatal - but the people who make them don't get binned or cancelled, we fix the mistakes where possible and carry on. That's what LTT needs to do next, mistakes have been made (some worse than others) and Linus seems fairly good at owning those mistakes, and he's allowed to justify his decisions and stand by them even if we don't all agree with them.

 

To Linus directly - whether or not this video was fair or justified is irrelevant. You can't just brush it under the carpet and the vast majority of your audience do not read these forums. You need to at least acknowledge it on the channel even if you don't discuss it, otherwise people will be forever confused. Not everybody knows how hard it is to set up testing processes, and not everybody appreciates how it is fundamentally impossible to run a company without making mistakes. You're an excellent host, so it should be no trouble at all for you to explain what your current processes are for dealing with these mistakes or to update everyone on how labs testing is going. I'm incredibly impressed at how active you've been on this forum, but I had to come to this forum to find out what was going on as there's nothing on Youtube, your main contact with your audience...

Don't be disheartened by negative comments, you could go and watch a video by your favourite person in the world and someone will be in the comments saying how rubbish they are. Negative comments are what you get from having an audience, they're not a consequence of doing bad things.

 

I'd also be perfectly happy to have fewer videos that go in to more detail, there's really no need to rush. There are already too many videos for me to keep up with.

[RichardBirch]

2 minutes ago, PandaSasquatch said:

At this point, I wouldn't personally say it's resolved yet, but LMG is clearly trying to make it right.

Despite my critical commentary in this thread, I do agree with you. Having watched Linus for many years, it's clear that he is upset about this entire situation, and not just because he has vested interest in the LMG empire. This must be upsetting to him on a personal level. GNs video succinctly showed that the mad rush to churn out content has turned LTTs output into a clusterfu*k of unreliable information and egregious screwups. At times he has doubled down on these issues and I assume this is because he saw each minor issue in it's own bubble, but to see a video essay clearly showing that it is consistently happening has to be an absolute gut punch.

 

But...

 

The way he has handled the situation has been incredibly poor, and there are some big issues that he and LMG as a whole need to work out. Perhaps he just doesn't know what to say or do at the moment. His initial response was frankly crap, but as someone who loves his job, his staff, and what he does, I can only assume he said it to protect them. Doesn't make it right however.

 

Once the dust settles, a full video of how things can be improved needs to be put out to regain viewers trust. And there's no sugar coating it; he needs to own up to the fact that the entire Billet Labs thing was poorly handled and flat out apologise on that one. The entire thing is a debacle and he needs to face it head on otherwise why would other hardware vendors trust him to give an unbiased and accurate review.

 

It's just an outright mess, and it's going to take some time to get it all right. I hope he does.