this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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What's going on between Linus Media Group and Gamers Nexus? (feddit.ch)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/outoftheloop
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I've been seeing a few posts about this, and judging by comments I've seen on posts related to this, there's been bad sentiment building up with LMG for some time now that has culminated in this recent dispute. Anyone have a brief catch-up of events?

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[–] TheBig2023Meltdown 57 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Gamers nexus released a video criticising Linus tech tips for their quality of videos. Highly recommend you watch it if youre familiar with LTT or are into tech in general

Tldr

It's just a bunch of controversy surrounding wrong data, incorrect facts in videos, poor quality assurance, giving products a bad review because they didn't follow instructions etc. They also auctioned off a one of a kind prototype sent in by a small company, who actually wants it back but they can't for obvious reasons.

Linus responded saying he's not going to talk about it in the WAN show (his podcast), and that his statement is enough. Said statement was apparently a bunch of nonsense. (I didn't read it thoroughly myself but that's the general consensus from others discussing)

[–] Contramuffin 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wouldn't necessarily say that Linus' response full of nonsense. It doesn't contain what we would normally expect out of a response, but it does give us nuggets of insight into his mindset and philosophy toward the issue.

My takeaway is that he's not a bad person, but he's well over his head in terms of managing his company. I think he knows that too, which is why he wants someone else to take the CEO position

[–] TheBig2023Meltdown 6 points 1 year ago

Yeah I did wonder isn't that what Linus wanted to avoid with a new CEO?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice one, thanks! I tried watching the start of the GN video about this, but it felt like being dropped in the middle of the situation and it assumes you have some prerequisite knowledge. I'm only loosely familiar with LTT.

I'll go give the video another chance now.

[–] TheBig2023Meltdown 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He recently introduced LTT labs, a lab that tests hardware and see if they perform to their advertised specifications. He tests a whole bunch of stuff like headphone audio, monitor visual quality, colour accuracy etc

The controversy is mainly that the data produced from the lab has a lot of errors that should have been caught before uploading

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the gist I seem to be getting from GN's video is that there is a lack of due diligence and journalistic integrity at LMG w.r.t. testing products, primarily because they're unnecessarily rushing content out.

[–] ShunkW 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My understanding is that LMG has been throwing subtle shade at most smaller creators who don't have the ability to create a state of the art lab for testing. In a recent video they specifically called out Nexus and another channel. Nexus decided to do a very tasteful and unbiased response showing why LMG is completely unreliable in their testing data. I've not seen a response from LMG yet. There's some real fucked up stuff that LMG did to a small creator of a water block recently that has made me unsubscribe.

They used the wrong hardware, and when it didn't work as expected, they destroyed it in their review. The company asked for their prototype back, but then LMG auctioned it off instead of returning it.

[–] Contramuffin -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Linus did do a response. My general takeaway is, he's well-intentioned but poorly skilled at running a company this size. His response basically boils down to:

  1. He acknowledges that his work was sloppy and he's been in the process of improving the workflow (although he does not mention exactly what these changes are)

  2. The waterblock was a misunderstanding and LMG fully compensated the company for the cost of the waterblock

  3. Linus was disappointed that GN did not reach out to him, since Linus was willing to answer questions about it and he felt that it would have created a more well-rounded video

  4. Linus was disappointed in the viewers because they were willing to vilify him due to the video

[–] ShunkW 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

  1. Cool.

  2. Yeah he auctioned off their best prototype, with no guarantee it's not going to someone who will just knock it off. Is he compensating them millions in opportunity cost?

  3. They didn't reach out to Nexus before trashing them in a video.

  4. He's repeatedly vilified himself at this point by being a douche who refuses to take responsibility for his own mistakes.

I'm done with them at this point. Especially with all the other ethical issues.

[–] vind 8 points 1 year ago

  1. He acknowledged that the work is sloppy but pushed an excuse that it is "growing pains" while disregarding every other criticism for quality.

  2. LMG had on several occasions promised to send the prototype back, but never did, even after various deadlines had been set by Billet. Additionally, according to Billet themselves, they heard nothing about compensation or payback until about 3 hours after the original GN video went live. Which Billet hadn't even replied to before Linus made his post saying they've already made the deal on compensation. This shows there is no misunderstanding, just bad ethics and bad management.

  3. As another commenter has written in another thread. Linus would've used any contact for comment as a way to attempt to clean up their fuck-up and try to make GN and Billet look bad. Similar to how a company dumping toxic waste into a river would take any contact for comment to clean up the river for a week as a news report was being made. There is no need for contacting a major company for comments when what they are doing is actively harming people.

  4. For many people, the concerns of quality between viewers and employees of LMG alike have not been heard and often just flatly ignored.

[–] eochaid 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Here's the video. Steve says its pretty concisely: https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/FGW3TPytTjc

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[–] Chickenstalker 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Linus tend to shoot his mouth. Luckily, he has Luke and Yvonne to kick him down a peg. I believe that Luke made Linus back down during the Trust Me Bro controversy and Luke will do the same here. Knowing Linus, he will probably even make a new video on this matter that will rake in 2 million views and profit from it.

[–] Shotgun_Alice 2 points 1 year ago

Came to say the exact same thing. Both benefit form it because here we are talking about it, so there's no down side for either of them. And you're right he'll make a video, get 2 million views and bank.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There was a vid of a lmg employee shitting on other reviewer, gn made a video calling them out.

Linus being linus, took it personal, denied everything, and proceeded to call gn unprofessional.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think 'shitting on' is a bit of an exaggeration, it was a passing comment from a technical guy during a tour that didn't mention GN and was in response to a question about why they're building this setup and how it will be different.

I think they were likely thinking of GN, but I didn't read it as quite so 'aggressive'.

[–] Kangy 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you watch the first 15-20 seconds of GN's first video on this, the clip of the guy in the tour literally calls out GamersNexus and Hardware Unboxed

Edit: "The difference between us and, similarly, GamersNexus and HardwareUnboxed, is we test new components, new tests, everytime"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

If you're interested at all, just watch the GN video. It's pretty long, but worth it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This video gives a really good breakdown of everything. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XH6zCNR0SZ4

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=XH6zCNR0SZ4

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.