Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[Ekin]

I find some of Steve's points not that troubling, like the private framework investment or the past workplaces of some employees.

 

But the Billet Labs situation makes me speechless. So many bad takes and then selling the prototype. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK LMG?
In WAN we get all the talk about how hard product design is. How small creators are affected by YouTube decisions or by react content. But when it is in LMG's hand you don't seem to be any better.

 

I also stopped watching ShortCircut some weeks ago, because I felt like the content was just useless. It is to long and has to many opinions for an unboxing but is not accurate enough to be review. I also felt misled with a ShortCirut representation of a product, after buing it myself.

 

I was already disappointed by the "Trust me Bro" shitshow. Even if Linus is now publicly stating that this wasn't a great move, there is still no heartfelt apology.

So, I will again hope for the best but only expect a “RIP Billet Labs” t-shirt on WAN show. Which is kind of sad. ☹

[Alexeygridnev1993]

15 minutes ago, manikyath said:

so.. this applies to GamersNexus too then?

GamersNexus is not the one who is hiding behind the distinction between a person a corporation to excuse himself for not disclosing his investment into Framework laptop every time they review the laptops.

[Matthew2051]

Good to shine some light on this topic. I wasn't aware of a lot of these issues, so thanks to GN for opening the discussion. I really hope LMG use this as constructive feedback and help strengthen gaps that come with rapid growth.

In my opinion, LMG need to relax the money focus a bit. It's crazy to me to sacrifice small sums of money over reputation, especially when LMG is valued as highly as it is. Put reputation at the forefront, even if it means taking a video down to resolve issues.

Keen to see what response we get. The auction seems well out of line, hope that gets some attention too.

Above all, I hope Linus can get past this and grow. I hope this doesn't spoil the passion and drive he and the team have for LMG and its creativity.

[antempus]

3 minutes ago, swimtome said:

Overall mostly agree with Steve, I think he left out some context at some points.  

• My main ugh was the WAN show clip on the block results - Linus sharing his thoughts unfiltered every week is a part of the reason we trust him.  Without context it just sounds like him telling BIllet labs to jump in the lake you can't touch me.  While the end result is indeed that's what Billet Labs probably heard, I don't think that's what Linus's intention was.
• Also the labs tour - I still haven't gotten clear what exactly happened but it's obvious the host of the tour isn't used to speaking and IMHO did not even intend to speak for LTT - he sounded just genuinely excited to be a part of LTT and seemed to misspeak.  ^{(Taran's first decree, the usual corporate statement of these views are my own and aren't necessarily the opinion of LTT}).

But overall these are minor and it doesn't change the end result and general vibe:

• The amount of corrections needed lately is definitely increasing and it seems fair for GN to say enough is enough.
• IMHO there is ZERO excuse that something like techquickie should have ANY asterisks.  It's short and its literally branded as purely educational.  There are several posts on Reddit of Professors using it.
• Steve really hand picked solid examples, a big kudos.  Not (IMHO) medium hanging fruit like ASUS customer service or reaching backwards to LTT store warranty.

This all feels like the same category of Linus still not bothering to add proper subtitles to videos - we're to fast paced to do it properly.  While I think most of us treat LTT as entertainment, Steve is very accurate that Linus, you just can't remotely act like that anymore.  LTT needs to make accuracy (and accessibility) their main priority, full stop.

Him sharing his unfiltered thoughts is not a quirky thing any more but rather something he needs to revisit: he is a representative and ostensibly the primary shareholder of LMG and his words carry far more weight than any one else. Same goes for the Labs Tour, while he may not be used to speaking he still is an employee in that capacity and that has real world impacts on viewers and companies alike. 


To everyone with the whataboutism to GN: 

This isn't about what GN has or has not done in the past, the goal is to shed light on increasingly concerning behavior that affects everyone at LMG, the viewers, and the companies they interface with (Billet Labs for example). We need to hold them to the standard that they presenting themselves, a tech review channel + some entertainment; if they want to just be entertainment, segment that to a different channel than the serious review work. 

[swimtome]

Just now, Ekin said:

“RIP Billet Labs” t-shirt on WAN show

I genuinely snorted  my drink, that was  a good one.  (Obviously, I don't think Linus would remotely do that)

[Captain Chunck]

18 minutes ago, Skiiwee29 said:

Some do. It is bad from a public standpoint looking in to know he has financial gains to be had if a competitor laptop say from HP or Dell were bad and compared it against a framework and drive sales to framework. He has a time or 2 used the framework if memory is correct as the "control" laptop to test against. 

Yeah true but I don't think Frameworks investment is the main issue people care about we've been made well aware of the investment from the get go, although people who don't watch LTT and aren't aware of that will look at that fact in a bad light, personally in regards to the investment in framework I think its a good thing, but I agree with the comments people are making in regards to linus not being involved in the review of laptops at any stage because of this 

[NO_ob]

56 minutes ago, hassam222 said:

The part where it is alleged LTT auctioned off a prototype water block they promised to return is troubling. That requires an official response.

Yeah I just watched the vid that was shocking they have probably caused a tonne of problems for that company along with linus shitting all over the product and then doubling down on it when they used the wrong gpu

[Raiden85]

Really can't believe what they did with with that water block, not only did they not test it properly, they apparently never followed their instructions, used the wrong hardware, never sent it back as requested as it was their best prototype and then auctioned it off!. This was a small startup and if it hasn't already it could kill that company.

And now that prototype is out in the wild that device could end up being copied and really kill the company. What in the hell where they thinking by auctioning it off in the first place as its a borrowed prototype, they don't own it. 

[Skiiwee29]

18 minutes ago, Agall said:

I believe he discloses every time he does a laptop review that he's personally invested into Framework?

He does

[Middcore]

4 minutes ago, Agall said:

Technically he's not the CEO anymore, yeah? He's a creative director now IIRC.

 

Anyone who doesn't think Linus is still the driving force of the company is being naïve. 

 

That isn't to say that LMG might not be counting on there being a lot of naïve people out there. 

[Ultraforce]

4 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Wait, so what they're saying is LTT releases clickbaity content about trash consumer electronics instead of detailed analysis, benchmarking and testing of computer parts like GN does? wow, I never knew!!! how could they???!!!!

 

 

/s obv.

If it was just about information that was generally new than it could be a short segment about LMG not returning and auctioning off the Billet Labs piece.

 

Just now, manikyath said:

the severity of the issues is the problem. he's making it seem like LMG is purposefully inaccurate for the sake of lining their own pockets. no one here is arguing that the issues dont exist, the point is that if the way GN is making them out to be is in any way accurate to the real situation.

I do think that there was definitely a bit over anthropomorphizing companies. Albeit that is something that the shareholder of LMG has also done where he emphasizes that while corporations are people are laughable, people do make up corporations. I would have probably would have worded a lot of the inaccuracies differently, but GN is trying to focus solely on LMG and LTT Labs rather than underlying causes for the push to grow and make new content quickly. Since the answer isn't that the writers at LMG if given the time wouldn't be qualified and be able to notice the inaccuracy there's a game of telephone, and it's unreasonable to expect everyone in a company of over 100 to be extremely technical about PC hardware components. Especially as there have been mentions of not having good onboarding documents for writers, I can't imagine there's great onboarding documents set up for editors for reviews.

[Eruainur]

This needs to be addressed, and not just in a WAN Show segment. 

I'm not running a multi-million dollar company, and I'm not responsible for hundreds of people's livelihoods, but in my opinion, it would be the best thing to do to cut down the quantity of videos in favor of quality. A mistake here and there is fine; after all, we are all just human, but some of the bigger ones just can not happen. 

Again, I don't know how it would affect their bottom line, but some changes need to happen. In the end, LMG has a responsibility to their viewers because many of us influence purchasing decisions by implicitly trusting the accuracy of reviewers. This is not to be taken lightly.

I love LMG and I hope they can learn from this.

[NO_ob]

47 minutes ago, coonwhiz said:

Steve does say "Linus has personally invested $200k in Framework". But I don't think it really matters whether its LTT/LMG or Linus's own cash. Linus and Yvonne are the sole/majority shareholders for LMG (IDK if Luke/Nick/other C Suite has any). As such, utilizing LTT to promote a brand that he has a personal investment in, or any negative coverage of their competitor can be seen as a conflict since he personally stands to gain when Framework gets good press.

 

 

I dont really see it as a problem i think he should be reviewing other laptops poorly for not being as repairable as the framework as thats how laptops should be, i dont think he needs to be neutral in this aspect because laptop manufacturers intentionally make their devices a pain in the ass to work on and its been getting worse and worse over the last decade or so. He has done a laptop review since his investment afaik and it seemed fairly neutral

[coonwhiz]

7 minutes ago, Agall said:

Technically he's not the CEO anymore, yeah? He's a creative director now IIRC.

Terren still reports to Linus and Yvonne as they're the Board of Directors.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Middcore said:

 

Anyone who doesn't think Linus is still the driving force of the company is being naïve. 

 

That isn't to say that LMG might not be counting on there being a lot of naïve people out there. 

wasnt the very point of linus not being CEO that he would have more time to steer the creative process (i.e. the way videos are moade)

 

that's not being naive, that's completely misunderstanding how LMG works..

[Zodiark1593]

27 minutes ago, manikyath said:

so.. steve is making a stink over something an LMG employee said, without the context of what they were talking about, and the environment they were talking in...

 

i feel like there's a strong vibe of "everyone is handling this the wrong way" here...

 

this is the point where i watch the entire GN video to make sure the above statement is correct...

 

there's a lot of truth here.. but the general tone of the video seems.. unnecessarily nitpicky and vindictive?

 

steve ripping on the framework investment being conflict of interest for doing laptop reviews.. is also just unnecessary. linus is aware of the potential conflict of interest, it has been brought up to the community at the time of him considering it, and is mentioned in each laptop review he hosts.

also this:

is a very important distinction. you cant talk about the budgets of a corporation, and then talk about someone's personal investment as if they are one and the same.

 

i'm actually at the point where i'm getting annoyed at steve putting far too many out of context quotes into his video. it seems almost purposefully disingenuous on his part to cut things to make them seem worse.. when the full story is already less than favourable.

 

yes.. LMG makes a lot of mistakes, too many mistakes.. but saying that a "100 million dollar company" should not do this, is just factually inaccurate. that cash does not exist at LMG, and steve knows this. why make this argument if not to purposefully make LMG seem evil, rather than just careless.

 

it *could* have been a wakeup call for LMG, but instead the entire video just feels like steve going as hard as he can without openly hard cutting his own ties with LMG in case he needs linus to call someone at youtube for him.

 

actually.. this has been an issue i've had with steve's videos in general. i like steve, i love what he stands for, but every time i bump into a video of his he seems to be unnecessarily vindictive about everything. it's just exhausting at this point. steve's usually right, but he loses so much credibility to me by inflating facts almost into the field of alternative truths... life is crazy enough as it, let's not inflate things any more and try to fix things for once.

 

PS: a TL:DR here in case someone is gonna pop in to call me an LMG shill.. i 87% agree with steve on the topic, i just also 99% disagree with the way he voices his opinion on said topic.

Almost like everyone is human, and subject to emotions. 
 

I’ve yet to listen to the video, and will shortly. Though some initial thoughts first. 

 

In agreement with what another poster said above, a lot of videos LTT has produced is pretty similar to Top Gear, which isn’t a bad thing by itself, but is trying to pivot to a more objective direction, and sometimes comes across as trying to fit in between.

 

There have definitely been some objective quality issues I’ve noticed as well, ranging from visual, such as not keeping focus, to corrections in information after the fact. Visual annotations in particular are not great for those of us that primarily listen instead of watch. 
 

There isn’t a particular massive standout problem, but lots of little things that hint towards a loose QC process. I’m unsure of what sort of QA process currently occurs ( and as someone that works QC, I’m quite curious), so I won’t speculate further. 

[BondiBlue]

I haven't finished watching the entire video yet, but I did watch the section regarding the Billet Labs prototype cooler being sold at LTX, and that's very disturbing if true. I hope that LMG explains how this happens, and I hope they don't try to chalk it up to some communication issue or something. Selling a prototype that you didn't have permission to sell is disgusting already, but doing so after agreeing twice to return the unit to the company that owns it is even worse. 

 

If the thing with the Billet Labs cooler is true then I'm not sure how Linus or anyone at LMG could possibly make up for such a bad decision. This is coupled with the inaccurate testing of the product that made it seem terrible. 

 

Personally I completely agree about LMG rushing things far too often. I've been watching LTT for around a decade, and as the company has grown and grown the quality of the content hasn't increased at the same rate. The inaccuracies are more frequent than ever, and it's something that the leadership doesn't seem to care about fixing. I really hope LMG addresses some of these issues. 

[Captain Chunck]

1 hour ago, hassam222 said:

The part where it is alleged LTT auctioned off a prototype water block they promised to return is troubling. That requires an official response.

100% I think LTT have some major explaining to do here I really feel sorry for the company seems like LTT put minimal effort in there review and just screwed them over big time, but I'm willing to wait to see what LTT have to say on the matter before coming to any conclusion 

[ARitz Cracker]

1 minute ago, Middcore said:

 

Anyone who doesn't think Linus is still the driving force of the company is being naïve. 

 

That isn't to say that LMG might not be counting on there being a lot of naïve people out there. 

Eh, well, the vibe I personally got from that was "I am still running the show, but I don't want to deal with the logistics of running a company" especially if the shareholders never changed. This... actually would make Terran more of a COO than a CEO in the traditional sense.

[RasmusDC]

This fast journalism is a big issue in our current marked, rather be fast and then say "sorry" than correct, it is also QUITE obvious with the foundation of guys like Louis Rossmann, where it is also REACTION, then ohhh somebody actually told me other facts, and i think i need to rethink my stance. (nobody actually says that these people are not intelligent, but with the platform size, of both Louis and LTT the responsibility is bigger)

 

And by "saying" sorry it "just absolves" you from the damage you could have done, by just being FAST..

 

But that is also the CLEAR focus on Linus, "money" and "Views" is value, so i do what i can see positive metrics on..

 

and that it is "okay" as long as it is "creating traction" i feel like that is WHAT f... up the world today, Ethics and values are "for sale" and that is the business model. 

 

BIG also ends up always being Corrupt at some point, because it becomes so value oriented..

 

IT also showed with the whole warrenty case with the backpack, and other incidents. 

 

AS long as it is ENTERTAINMENT, and CLEAR that you do not sell your self as "governance factor" in the business, and now all the "buying" of LAB equipment seems more like a try to buy "trust" more than actually showing it..

 

and then again, NOTHING on a single product test, shows ANYTHING about product quality, what you learn in ALL quality focused processes is capability is based on series of products, maybe 30+ as a baseline test, to get ENOUGH value to actually remove that this was a single incident, and potential evaluation of failrates.

 

So if you want to play the BIG game, then you simply have to be right, i agree with Steve on this, BE RIGHT. you are not allowed as many mistakes. 

 

But this is just my opinion. and just reflecs on my foundation.

[Srishocked]

What I seem to notice in the entire conversation is people talking about the Framework investment as something they were aware of, and that they are fine by it! Some people defending Linus as just being Linus or that they explained this issue on WAN. WAN is specifically watched almost exclusively by those who are long term followers of the channel. What about the average joe who was googling which graphic card to buy or is that cooler better than this one? LTT being one of the largest tech video is often recommended on the top of these search results and can horribly misguide a person's opinion! LTT is not a channel just for its subscribers when they release a PRODUCT REVIEW. This was said countless times by LINUS himself and the very fact these factual errors are popping in more than they should is an absolute crime for a channel of LTTs size.

[Zato80]

Billet Labs have been treated disgustingly by Linus and LMG and they should be ashamed of themselves.

 

They set that block up for failure from the start, used wrong card model entirely, wasn’t mounted correct as a result, shot the block to bits in the review because they made a mes sod the review, didn’t send it back and then sold it at auction.

 

And in the WAN show he just continued to double down on dumping all over the block even though LMG did everything wrong.

 

That section made me very upset and Linus deserves everything he gets for that one.

 

 

As for the shoddy results from tests, well when you don’t take stickers of a mouse then criticise it ……. hardly a shock the rest of the standards are suspect.

 

There are some questions around impartiality but the biggest issue is how dirty they did billet labs.

[coonwhiz]

Just now, NO_ob said:

I dont really see it as a problem i think he should be reviewing other laptops poorly for not being as repairable as the framework as thats how laptops should be, i dont think he needs to be neutral in this aspect because laptop manufacturers intentionally make their devices a pain in the ass to work on and its been getting worse and worse over the last decade or so. He has done a laptop review since his investment afaik and it seemed fairly neutral

I'm not saying his laptop reviews have been negative without justification. It's just that if I were ASUS/Dell/Razer/etc... and a review about my product came back more negative than expected, I'd be concerned about a conflict. And I also wouldn't want to be Linus in that situation.

[Viesulis]

The Billet Labs thing is heartbreaking. Imagine being the people making that. Linus says he doesnt want to spend 500 dollars worth someones time retesting it but hes absolutely fine with stealing and selling off something someone has worked on for hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours? Even more tragically there might not even be a contractual agreement and Billet Labs might not be able to afford a lawsuit. Im going to unsub and not watch a second of LMG content until this is resolved and i urge others to do the same. 

[Middcore]

1 minute ago, ARitz Cracker said:

Eh, well, the vibe I personally got from that was "I am still running the show, but I don't want to deal with the logistics of running a company" especially if the shareholders never changed. This... actually would make Terran more of a COO than a CEO in the traditional sense.

The vibe I've always gotten is "Linus doesn't want to have to handle himself like he's running a multimillion dollar company so he's pretending somebody else is running it to make it easier to avoid responsibility when he shoots his mouth off."