This is quoted from Linus on the LTT forums:
"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."
I dunno man I smell a rat.
The fact that LTT says Gamers Nexus should have reached out implies they didn’t. Most proper news sources include “so and so did not respond for a request for comment”. Really? Steve didn’t even bother to call and ask? Tells me GN is fishing for views or something here. Steve always tries to get all his facts right but didn’t reach out to the source - why? Big oversight for Steve.
Even if they auctioned the prototype due to miscommunication Linus is willing to do the right thing here, and the fact that GN referred to it as selling not auctioning for charity tells us Steve is biased.
I, too, am mostly just saddened by how fast the pitchforks were raised. Nobody asked LTT what was up, nobody asked if it was true. Opened fire without cause for broadside. In this tight knit tech YouTuber community, that’s bad.
The video is not monetized and directly hurts his relationship with his friend which has more of a financial impact as LTT leads the tech review space. He shows the facts in his video, what is there to ask other than to do better?
The selling or auctioning thing really doesn’t matter as it wasn’t theirs to get rid of.
People will be unreasonable, that is unavoidable. LTT’s actions are unacceptable for a review company. The audience needs to be able to trust them, but cutting corners isn’t the way to do it.
The way Steve cut clips of Linus with his own commentary but didn’t reach out for direct comment, like every news source ever, tells me this is a biased hit piece.
I reckon GN does not like the Labs and is biased here.
But why? What does he gain from shitting on his colleague if it isn’t necessary? GN gains more from being friendly with LTT as they have more connections.
As a self-admitted internet user who knows not a lot about business, given how I’ve never run one, I can somewhat see both sides
By being friendly with LMG they do get more connections, but more of they just get community goodwill/share viewers between, so if a user joins the tech YT sphere with LMG, they are more likely to start watching GN and vice versa
However, theoretically, LMG/Labs could pose somewhat of a threat to GN, just because of the worry that sheer size could funnel users away/more resources means GN can’t keep up with Labs, and by dividing the tech community they could get people to come to their side and tell people to stay away from LMG and with GN
I hope and don’t think that second point is very likely though
Absolutely not. All the relevant information is out there. There would be nothing to gain by reaching out first. In fact, Linus had already doubled down on his position when being called out. So his position is clear.
And the auctioning off the prototype speaks loudly as a dishonourable action.
Reaching out would have only given LMG an opportunity to get ahead of the bad press and try to spin something in their favour.
Reaching out first is fine when reporting on something already “released”, but in this case it would serve no purpose.
If other news articles report on this situation, then they would reach out for a comment.
GN doesn’t need to get Linus’ opinion on this. No amount of Linus whining about stupid bullshit could have changed the facts presented.
Steve referred to it as selling because that’s what it is. What they do with the profit after does not make the slightest difference to the company they crippled. I can’t get away with stealing by calling it a miscommunication, why should they?
People raised pitchforks because pitchforks are deserved. You don’t need to ask the most biased possible source if a proven fact is true or not.
Linus might be wiling to do the right thing but he isn’t, he is lying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso
You clearly haven’t watched the video, because Steve clearly states it was auctioned.
Neither side is fully in the right here, but that’s just how the world is. Not black and white, rather gray. The question is, how dark is that shade of gray? I personally think GN should’ve reached out, but it is their choice. I can still think it’s a mistake though. I also think LMG should have done a better job keeping track of things, whether it be information on videos or whether they can sell a water block or not. However, the fact remains that GN has points that are valid, but LMG also has a good track record of usually doing the right thing (even if it’s not delivered/explained well), or at least trying to remedy the issue as best they can, so they seem to at least have a few people who care about doing the right thing (though hopefully/probably most do)
I kinda agree, and IMO Gamers Nexus has become more of a drama channel than a tech channel at this point (which was maybe called for during the Newegg RMA situation, but I think they got stuck in drama mode after that and it’s been sad to see GN continue down that path lately).
The video isn’t monetized. Its clearly a video they felt like they had to make, but didn’t want to.