Gamers Nexus alleges LMG has insufficient ethics and integrity

[ZombieMan762]

11 minutes ago, stayupthetree said:

My problem with this that GN does this while pretending that they themselves aren't an industry member. Like they are some sort of outlier above the fray.

 

Its a nuance in the scale they are operating at. Theres a gigantic gulf between a channel operating with a small team and someone with multiple companies and over 100 employees (most of whom are not consumer facing). LTT has an entire business focused on selling consumer products. Thats not just selling channel merch to help the creator its an actual money making company outside of the YouTube space to design and sell products to consumers.  

[prajaybasu]

Since this has become a feedback thread, I'll take it as an opportunity to vent out my thoughts about LMG I've just kept to myself for the past few months. 

 

I've been watching Linus for 10 years now (this is my 3rd post in this forum in the past 8 years), and it increasingly feels like LTT videos are becoming like *that* Verge video, the one which he and all other tech YouTubers made fun of.  That is perhaps the shortest way to phrase it. Unplanned execution, lots of mistakes or lack of knowledge, complete denial after the mistakes get pointed out, etc.  and overall being targeted for a dumber audience in a world which cares a lot more about nerdy tech like the shiny new Nvidia GPUs than 10 years ago.

I'm just not excited for LTT and ShortCircuit videos anymore. ShortCircuit does not put out reviews for actually interesting new tech like laptops, and when they do, it's already been out for a long time - I've just not seen any proper videos about laptops I'd want to buy ever since the Framework investment. SC used to be my favorite LMG channel for a while. Now it seems like only Dell can afford to pay to have their laptop be in a SC video - a laptop which is largely the same as last gen, while other brands have been launching new completely new SKUs (ASUS/MSI/Lenovo).

 

And the LTT videos - they start with a great idea, and just leave me blue balled due to the lack of effort and utter chaos throughout the video. It's fun if it's something going wrong for like a couple of minutes, but the entire videos are just so chaotic that it's become tiring.  

 

It seems like LTT is trying to be the jack of all trades unfortunately. There's a better YT channel out there for everything that LTT is trying to be and they're still pumping out good videos so it's not like everyone has completely run out of ideas. If I wanted to know about ultra fast gaming monitors and SFF builds - I'd go to Optimum Tech. For laptop there's Dave2D, Jarrod's Tech, GizmoSlipTech and MobileTechReview. If I wanted concrete data on hardware, I'd go to Gamers Nexus or Hardware Unboxed. If I wanted some unserious tech content, I'd try Austin Evans or Unbox Therapy. Plenty of smaller channels for every specific Mechanical keyboard related content I'd want to check out. Plenty of audiophile channels and mainly Reddit for anything headphone related. RTings also covers a lot of these points. 

 

I'd visit LTT for cool projects like whole room watercooling or 7 gamers 1 PC or 16K gaming but there's hardly been any triple-A content like that pushed out in the past few years. Wish that more of the budget - actual cash AND most importantly, time, was spent on the new projects. It's not like LTT even tries to hide the rushed style of content publicly - it has become a running joke - an excuse for the sorry state of things in some videos.

 

Also, this has nothing to do with new hosts or employees. I've seen the same hosts (including Linus) get affected by all of these points. Since you guys launched LTT TV, how about you go back and watch some old content to see what made your channel grow?

 

Mac Address puts out way less content but the videos are top notch. It absolutely shows how much the fast pace of videos is affecting the quality of content on LMG.

 

[charliebros]

5 minutes ago, Karl Mern said:

You cannot make this up, even more errors, EposVox on youtube calling out ltt latest video, link to comment -

Sheesh...

[james3126]

As scathing as the video was, I feel it was very important. It was not an attack, and should not be taken as one. However the blindsiding of such a video can feel like one, It should be taken as a valid criticism (to which Linus appears to be somewhat doing), and then fair/reasonable action be taken upon that criticism. I believe Steve spoke for what many of us have been thinking for a while. I do also believe that Steve should have reached out for comment prior to publishing, and to not have done so is in poor taste. He's reached out for comments from many vendors/manufacturers/etc on videos of this nature in the past. However it's important to remember that the lack of LMGs comments within the video do not negate the findings and general public opinions of these findings. Comments will also not undo the existing errors and issues in the video creation workflow. Only given a confirmation that LMG was aware of these issues creeping in.

 

Viewers should put down pitch-forks and think clearly. Take a level headed approach. We never want to drive away competition in any space. Both GN and LMG have stated time and time again that competition drives innovation, and betters the outcome for the consumers. Competitors in the industry should hold each other accountable, especially when accuracy is the point in question.

 

Linus has made it clear that he intends this to not become a PR headed social media jabbing contest, and stated that this is being worked on with better content on the near horizon. With that in mind, I hope and believe that there will be positive outcomes from this. Hopefully this is what LMG needed to refocus and double down on what matters most. Quality over quantity. Always. "One home run is much better than two doubles".

[Legion]

2 minutes ago, Luscious said:

I got four words for you Linus - slow the fuck down!!!

 

You are like that kid in high school who could never pay attention beyond 5 minutes, exhibits all the symptoms of ADHD and is a handful for parents to manage.

 

As for Steve's video, I feel it was a long time coming to finally address many of the issues. These hit personal to me too as for many years I was doing the same job - reviewing tech gear online. The big difference in my work routine was I adhered to one golden rule - NO DEADLINES!!! I would take however much time I needed with a product to look at it properly, test it, review it, take it through its paces and form an educated, hands-on opinion before sitting down and start bashing away at the keyboard.

 

And while I was nowhere near pushing out multiple articles a week, the work that I did do was well put together, accurate and detailed. I honestly cannot recall where I needed to get back and significantly redo a piece because I had made a serious error, and you would be hard pressed to find a piece where there even is an "EDIT" remark - and that's across over 100 credited articles.

 

To be honest, I have stopped watching LTT videos this year. It's just not worth my time any more. The clown-show antics, the ads, all your fucking segways... I don't need to hear it. If you are that desperate for ad revenue then you are doing something wrong, more so when other tech reviewers survive without all the nonsense sprinkled in.

 

Case in point - for years I have been bashing you guys over your horrendous laptop reviews. Not once has Alex criticized a manufacturer when they sent him a laptop with a horrible keyboard layout. Not once!!! How the hell can he call himself a serious laptop user and expert critic if he is missing those glaring deficiencies??? I have been using laptops for 22+ years and can immediately tell if a keyboard layout is rubbish or not. Alex has no business reviewing laptops when he doesn't even know his way around keyboards!!!

 

The result of this lazy attitude from leading review outlets - manufacturers become lazy too. In shopping for a replacement laptop I have found it next to impossible to find one with a proper keyboard. They either mash the cursor keys together, screw up the zero on the numpad or place the damn power button where the delete key should be. Try editing a document where instead of replacing text you power down your laptop - an absolutely maddening experience!!! In years past I would have expected BS like this from the likes of Clevo and Acer/Gateway but today even the big names like HP and Alienware have decided not to give a shit when it comes to placing a proper keyboard on their $2000+ products. And when manufacturers become lazy that's when consumers suffer.

 

So yes, what Steve did had to be done, because when reviewers get complacent manufacturers follow, and that's never good for the consumer.

Its been like this for years. I pretty much gave up watching LTT videos as the quality dipped continuously over time.

Watching Linus focusing on a single point he can contest rather than acknowledging properly he needs to slow the hell down is the same thing he does every other time this shit comes up.

 

He intentionally misses the wood for the trees every single time and its getting exhausting.

[Drazil100]

11 minutes ago, Bleda412 said:

If you look at Linus' post, you will notice that he completely ignored the conflicts of interest raised by Gamers Nexus.

The conflict of interest is well known by LMG fans, and Linus has always been very upfront about it. He also mentions his investment in every laptop review he is a part of.

It is important to know and therefor include in GN's video, but it is not the most important thing to respond to in this controversy.

[WillHeard]

14 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

If you're new to the channel, I understand why you might not know this, but we are extremely committed to improving our accuracy to the point where we are building out a $10M+ facility jam-packed full of equipment and engineering know-how. It's taking time, and this kind of aggressive expansion has been a learning curve for us, but to frame our recent actions as "sacrificing accuracy" is misleading at best. 

We need to make a lot of process changes to get to the point where everything is water-tight. That's a big part of why we added our new CEO Terren to our leadership team, but once again... things take time. He's been full time on the job for less than a single quarter and he's getting up to speed on all the things we are doing right... and yes... all the things we are doing wrong.

 

Trust me, we know. But we are making major investments in improving all of this and we won't stop.

 

I'm not new. 6+ year YT sub, about 6 months on floatplane (would be a good place to address this with a more nuanced slice of the community). Please allow yourself the time to respond to this, with your team, and compare videos from 2017, 18 to now. pick 5 random videos from the calendar years and compare the number of inaccuracies. You have lowered your standards, and it sucks to read you try to craft an emotional defense instead of focusing on doing better as a leading, inspiring company in tech.

 

I can't think of a better word than disturbing to describe the way you talk about Billet Labs... you are not this out of touch bro. There is not one shred of evidence that those guys are the grifters you are implying them to be. Do better.

 

[mbacc]

14 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

.

OP mentioned "sacrificing accuracy" because your latest videos were not accurate despite your investments. It sounds like you are aware that Labs data might have big mistakes given the lack of maturity in the team. Why did you decide to use it? Why not let Labs pilot longer, while Emily & OG team collect the data and publish (AFAICT, they were more accurate than what Labs can do right now)? Was ROI/tax/etc in the matter that we are unaware of?

 

I am not sure why you are bringing the new CEO into the discussion here, was it his call and not yours?

 

EDIT: grammar

[DeatheTech]

@LinusTech In your latest video regarding the microphone roundup, your editor showed the same review twice.

This is the kind of stuff GN was talking about, small errors that could easily be prevented with a bit more time reviewing before publish.

[HunchoGang]

6 hours ago, Jazmodo said:

This was overly dramatic & sensationalist, and isn't the first time by GamersNexus either.

I think the underlying growth of LMG upsets GN. Moving more into more detailed hardware tests directly competes with GN, and they clearly don't like it.

GN also seem to feel LMG 'copied' some of their merchandise sales. LTT deskpads came out after GNs Modmats. LTT screwdriver came out after GN screwdrivers. 

LMG content is fast, and loose, sometimes inaccurate, but (almost) always entertaining. Some criticism is valid, this just seemed overly salty.

*Before I get come at by certain people, I want to preface this response by saying that I have been a long-time supporter of Linus Tech Media Group and always will be a supporter until the end of time, but I am a firm believer in excising benign tumors before they become malignant and ruin the integrity of the body of a company as a whole. Take this statement as you will*

 

The same can be said with your direct statement... The simple fact that your response was immediately directed toward jealousy and LMG attempting to move into more hardware tests to "directly compete" with GN just shows the drama and sensationalism on your end lol. Not to mention you stating that GN "feels" like LMG "copied" some of their merchandise sales? If their focus was on financial competition in any regard the video that they just made in regards to the Accuracy, Ethics, and Responsibility of LTT would be made monetized- But it isn't. Imo this just reeks of a lack of accountability strictly on the end of LMG and their supporters that blatantly see the inconsistencies with their production and reviews, but will fail to call them out on it while also likely watching other content creators for their actual legitimate reviews when buying products, but will never voluntarily seek out LTT first.

 

And in regard to the statement in which you said, this wasn't the first time by GamersNexus either, I honestly would like to see some examples. I have found inconsistencies on their end in regard to what I deem partially biased reviews, but as with Linus Tech Media Group, no channel or review can ever be perfect, but in the accountability department I do see significantly more.

[jitteryzeitgeist]

Just now, Legion said:

Its been like this for years. I pretty much gave up watching LTT videos as the quality dipped continuously over time.

Watching Linus focusing on a single point he can contest rather than acknowledging properly he needs to slow the hell down is the same thing he does every other time this shit comes up.

 

He intentionally misses the wood for the trees every single time and its getting exhausting.

My breaking point was when he dragged a fan/viewer in Twitch chat during the WAN show for daring to suggest the 6000 AMD GPUs were decent.

 

And then their "data" in the AMD 7000 reviews, which was an ungodly cluster of bad ideas and horrible presentation, including "pairing" the CPUs by "Model."  Which, what?  No.  You list by performance, and by price, because those are the only two things that actually matter.

[Legitsu]

theft by conversion is what the billetlabs would be if anything

https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/theft-by-conversion.html

 

does this change the fact that product is stupid? 

nope

would putting the block on a a 3090 change the fact that the product is a poor value

also no 

also if its such a big deal: where is billetlabs statement on this?

 

also if they auctioned it off by accident which I can totally understand given the bethomth of a machine being run by litteral monkeys 

why don't you just get it back: contact the party that has it offer them a couple G for it and say mea culpa that wasn't suposed to be forsale

 

prototypes or review product getting `sold` in this manner happens more then you think its not entirely uncommon 

 

 

[dogwitch]

4 minutes ago, FairPumpkin said:

 

GN talked with newegg before publishing their first video (talked virtually before the initial one and went to their HQ after it to talk some more). With LTT they just went for the kill because, other than the egregious Billet thing, most of the video are bullshit nitpicks - out of multiple hundreds of videos - which wouldn't get as much traction if they were in context. Like talking about framework, every video has a clear notice "hey we're invested in this!!!", fuck GN for bringing it up like some conflict that's hidden away.

 

I hope LTT learns from the billet thing to better handle press samples and improves labs processes before the lab is officially live (continued retests also help there, similar to what rtings does where they update stuff), the rest I don't really care. I watch the videos to take my mind of work, I don't plan on buying 99.9% of the stuff on videos and their data is on the right ballpark.

 

PS: no i didn't read all the thread and don't plan to lol, just came to see the official statement and found this nugget near it that was worth a reply

yeah gn got roasted on twitter and reddit with mod mat thing. awhile back(not pattern opps).

[Faranox]

4 minutes ago, Anorax said:

Time to tighten up your ship. Step back and look at the quality (or lack thereof) of your video production and testing teams. You have over 100 staff yet it seems there is no oversight of the production standards of your content. If you want to be taken seriously as a hardware review site then you need to do something drastic and soon. On a positive note your screwdriver is excellent! 

Exactly, they didn't rush the screw driver and it turned out excellent. I don't understand why they need to rush every video out when they have proved they can create amazing things with more time.

[Domi060288]

3 minutes ago, prajaybasu said:

...................  and it increasingly feels like LTT videos are becoming like *that* Verge video, the one which he and all other tech YouTubers made fun of.  That is perhaps the shortest way to phrase it. Unplanned execution, lots of mistakes or lack of knowledge, complete denial after the mistakes get pointed out, etc.  and overall being targeted for a dumber audience in a world which cares a lot more about nerdy tech like the shiny new Nvidia GPUs than 10 years ago.

 

 

 

 

This one absolutely 100%

[xCSxXenon]

2 minutes ago, DeatheTech said:

@LinusTech In your latest video regarding the microphone roundup, your editor showed the same review twice.

This is the kind of stuff GN was talking about, small errors that could easily be prevented with a bit more time reviewing before publish.

Lol their objective coverage videos are complete jokes

[WillHeard]

16 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

If you're new to the channel, I understand why you might not know this, but we are extremely committed to improving our accuracy to the point where we are building out a $10M+ facility jam-packed full of equipment and engineering know-how. It's taking time, and this kind of aggressive expansion has been a learning curve for us, but to frame our recent actions as "sacrificing accuracy" is misleading at best. 

We need to make a lot of process changes to get to the point where everything is water-tight. That's a big part of why we added our new CEO Terren to our leadership team, but once again... things take time. He's been full time on the job for less than a single quarter and he's getting up to speed on all the things we are doing right... and yes... all the things we are doing wrong.

 

Trust me, we know. But we are making major investments in improving all of this and we won't stop.

You do not get to say "we want to be a real company" and not take accountability. 

 

Well, you can, it just makes you no better than those you've fought against as long as I've watched...

[Anorax]

4 minutes ago, prajaybasu said:

Since this has become a feedback thread, I'll take it as an opportunity to vent out my thoughts about LMG I've just kept to myself for the past few months. 

 

I've been watching Linus for 10 years now (this is my 3rd post in this forum in the past 8 years), and it increasingly feels like LTT videos are becoming like *that* Verge video, the one which he and all other tech YouTubers made fun of.  That is perhaps the shortest way to phrase it. Unplanned execution, lots of mistakes or lack of knowledge, complete denial after the mistakes get pointed out, etc.  and overall being targeted for a dumber audience in a world which cares a lot more about nerdy tech like the shiny new Nvidia GPUs than 10 years ago.

I'm just not excited for LTT and ShortCircuit videos anymore. ShortCircuit does not put out reviews for actually interesting new tech like laptops, and when they do, it's already been out for a long time - I've just not seen any proper videos about laptops I'd want to buy ever since the Framework investment.

 

And the LTT videos - they start with a great idea, and just leave me blue balled due to the lack of effort and utter chaos throughout the video. It's fun if it's something going wrong for like a couple of minutes, but the entire videos are just so chaotic that it's become tiring.  

 

It seems like LTT is trying to be the jack of all trades unfortunately. There's a better YT channel out there for everything that LTT is trying to be and they're still pumping out good videos so it's not like everyone has completely run out of ideas. If I wanted to know about ultra fast gaming monitors and SFF builds - I'd go to Optimum Tech. If I wanted concrete data on hardware, I'd go to Gamers Nexus or Hardware Unboxed. If I wanted some unserious tech content, I'd try Austin Evans or Unbox Therapy. Plenty of smaller channels for every specific Mechanical keyboard related content I'd want to check out. Plenty of audiophile channels and mainly Reddit for anything headphone related. RTings also covers a lot of these points.

 

I'd visit LTT for cool projects like whole room watercooling or 7 gamers 1 PC or 16K gaming but there's hardly been any triple-A content like that pushed out in the past few years. Wish that more of the budget - actual cash AND most importantly, time, was spent on the new projects. It's not like LTT even tries to hide the rushed style of content publicly - it has become a running joke - an excuse for the sorry state of things in some videos.

 

 

 

 

It's funny I was thinking about The Verge as well when I was watching some of these LTT videos.

[divito]

3 minutes ago, Anorax said:

Time to tighten up your ship. Step back and look at the quality (or lack thereof) of your video production and testing teams. You have over 100 staff yet it seems there is no oversight of the production standards of your content. If you want to be taken seriously as a hardware review site then you need to do something drastic and soon. On a positive note your screwdriver is excellent! 

LTT isn't a hardware review site. I'm not sure why people are prone to conflating these things.

If these issues exist when Labs launches their infrastructure and data, then people will have more contextual points.

[Zealotki11er]

For me I watch LTT for entertain. My problem has been is they end up just messing about eveything they do. Most of the time its not even funny. Would be nice if they finished project start to end without breaking things. Watching someone like DIY Perks create miracles and then you have LTT not even coming close.

[Moonzy]

6 minutes ago, DeatheTech said:

@LinusTech In your latest video regarding the microphone roundup, your editor showed the same review twice.

This is the kind of stuff GN was talking about, small errors that could easily be prevented with a bit more time reviewing before publish.

"OMG who tf cares? It's not the point of the video"

Is what he thinks, probably 

 

Stopped watching LTT for a while now, not surprised that they got called out though as the quality have been dropping the past 12 years I've watched LTT "grow"

 

Someone definitely needs a break, a reality check, and to get off their high horse

[jitteryzeitgeist]

2 minutes ago, Legitsu said:

theft by conversion is what the billetlabs would be if anything

https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/theft-by-conversion.html

 

does this change the fact that product is stupid? 

nope

would putting the block in a 3090 change the fact that hte product is stupid?

also no 

also if its such a big deal: where is billetlabs statement on this? 

If I don't do my job properly I get fired because clients who pay us a lot of money get angry.

 

Linus does his job improperly and has a massive band of merry men ready to keep his coattails from settling on the dust.

 

Nobody is above criticism and you aren't helping anything by pretending they are.

[octothorpe_rekt]

2 minutes ago, prajaybasu said:

I've been watching Linus for 10 years now, and it increasingly feels like LTT videos are becoming like *that* Verge video, the one which he and all other tech YouTubers made fun of.  That is perhaps the shortest way to phrase it. Unplanned execution, lots of mistakes or lack of knowledge, complete denial after the mistakes get pointed out, etc.  and overall being targeted for a dumber audience in a world which cares a lot more about nerdy tech like the shiny new Nvidia GPUs than 10 years ago

Absolutely.  Why even publish a video showing this level of incompetence and lack of preparation?  Linus dropping the occasional piece of hardware is funny, but posting a 21 minute video, most of which is trying to cobble together and improvise a build because they broke the motherboard they intended to use, rather than an evaluation of the product screams incompetence.  Pumps with loose fittings, radiators with missing fittings, a motherboard that needs to have half of its chipset heatsink cut off, and a mis-mounted reservoir means that you either don't know what you're doing, or you don't care.  Just like the Verge.

[VeryScary]

Majority of GN videos has around 200K views. This video about LTT has 1M videos in 8 hours. I wondering why he decided to make this video.

[xCSxXenon]

What's sad is I was really looking forward to a trusted source for future purchases,  such as cables and other tech items.  Currently, it seems like another cloud in the fog, clogging the internet up with more unreliable junk information. Big loss