2 days ago Gamer’s Nexus made a video calling out inaccuracies in LTT videos, including a pattern of behavior where mistakes aren’t corrected due to self-imposed time constraints. One of these inaccuracies was testing a prototype water block intended for a 3090ti on a 4090 instead and shitting on it for not performing on the wrong card. GN also calls out LMG selling the prototype water block instead of giving it back to Billet Labs like they were supposed to. The outcry was immediate. Linus made a post in response where he opens with “We didn’t sell it. We auctioned it for charity” which is ridiculous. He claims that they already had a deal to compensate Billet Labs for the prototype. He also basically does a half apology but also doubles down and says the water block is still terrible because of the price regardless of its performance. He’s also like (paraphrasing) “Yeah, I guess we made the wrong video. We should’ve ignored the price and made a power video.” He also is kinda dismissive of the inaccuracies as “mistakes happen” ignoring that they’re happening because of the crunch and also not being corrected because of the crunch. Yesterday GN made a response video admonishing this. Important points include: LMG did not reach out with a compensation offer until after the aforementioned GN video went live. After the video went live, LMG reached out with an offer to compensate to the value of the prototype. Notably, they requested that GN not share the stated value, and GN honored that request. BL had not yet responded to the offer at the time of the video. Additionally, they had a normal LMG video published this day as part of their regularly scheduled content. This video included inaccuracies of the sort that GN was calling out in the original video, as well as basic editorial mistakes. This highlighted the issue at an important time. Today Early this morning, a former employee posted a twitter thread alleging widespread misconduct in the company, including by upper management. It included allegations of sexual misconduct, harassment, assault, and a grind that resulted in her cutting herself to go to the ER to get a day off. It also included mentions of her being harassed by fans when she originally hinted about this (but didn’t directly say because she thought she was under NDA) A few hours later, a video went up on the LTT channel addressing the controversies with the water block and quality issues. However, it was obviously made prior to the allegations above as they aren’t addressed at all. In fact, it has several bits in it that were tone deaf on their own, but could be best described as “immediately aged poorly” in light of the allegations. It leads with their new CEO that they hired a few months ago reading from a teleprompter and trying to break the ice but failing and honestly being kinda mumbly and not great on camera. It includes a section from Colton, the “Head of Business Development, which includes HR, procurement, logistics, events, and sales & marketing”. The section is titled “Colton on ethics and sponsorships” which is poor form to have the person in charge of HR talking about ethics following those allegations. In it, he makes a joke about not having a job after this, which is like… well, maybe not after those allegations happening under your watch. Colton also says that he did respond offering compensation immediately after it was requested, but that he inadvertently didn’t include the company itself on the reply, and instead it only got sent internally. That’s… almost a reasonable explanation. However, it notably included a secreenshot of the email including the value of the protype that the company requested not be disclosed. Either this was intentional and a stab at the people that they should be apologizing to, or it was unintentional and highlights again the issues with quality in their production. Either way, not good. It’s also tone deaf on its own without the allegations. It has lots of reading from a teleprompter, tone-deaf jokes about “a segue to our sponsor… jk”, a plug for lttstore.com, and announcing a new screwdriver color. Overall, a bad response, especially given the timing. The message they were trying to get across, and the only takeaway that’s not bad for them, is that they are slowing the production schedule. In fact, they say they’re pausing youtube video production for a week to do a process review. Who knows what’ll come of that, but my take is that it’ll depend on if they can and are willing to cut out the toxic people and goals they have during this week or if they just spend a week shining a turd.
As a kinda epilogue, they posted in a text post on YouTube a short while ago that they’re bringing in a third party investigator to investigate the allegations.