The Problem with Linus Tech Tips – Part 1: Reviews, Ethics, and Billet Labs

So, I’m not a fan of Linus Tech Tips. It’s honestly jarring to see that they’re only getting called out now for the stuff they pull. 

Even so, I decided to dive into the different allegations and instances and I wanted to add my own two cents to this topic because as someone that reviews games, I kinda feel like it’s an important precedent to talk about things I find important.

For anyone that isn’t in the know, Linus Tech Tips and the Linus Media Group, abbreviated to LTT or LMG from now on, is a big company that started out as content creators creating content (often on the goofier side of things) focused around tech… with them nowadays, often benchmarking games and reviewing different tech.

As a side note, when I built my PC in 2019, I checked out some of their videos and was already rather annoyed by the frequent bits and pieces of information that is said in one way but then corrected with an asterisk, so I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the information given and whether or not I should trust this as a source.

So, I just looked up other places. That’s basically the extent at which I’ve dealt with them or watched their content. I’m not a hater but I’m also not a fan.

At one point there were allegations of Linus being racist and using slurs but nothing came of that, and that’s all I know.

So, this topic here is incredibly concerning and I wanted to talk about it… but I’d also recommend reading Part 2 of this post where I talk about a former employee’s allegations of sexual harassment, poor working conditions, abuse of power, sexism, and assault at LTT.

Linus Tech Tips being Unethical

Either way, Gamers Nexus recently called out LTT for their spread of misinformation, as well as ethical concerns, and they made two great videos on the topic.

In this unmonetized video right here, Steve Burke from Gamers Nexus covers serious concerns regarding the data accuracy of LMG, amongst other topics. 

The staff of LMG themselves admitted that LMG prefers quantity over quality which leads to the staff having to push out an absurd amount of videos per week, leaving no time to do a good job or to correct mistakes.

On top of that, Burke details how a lot of the data that LTT uses is either falsely analyzed, or falsified on purpose via varying settings and other inaccuracies.

Burke compared a lot of data to other outlets’ benchmarks and noticed many instances where the data was “off”, and not even by a small margin. 

Being inaccurate by mistake is one thing but using falsified information to then issue a verdict in a review format can be quite devastating, especially for smaller startups like Billet Labs (more on that later).

After LTT responded to this video in a very barebones and disappointing if not perhaps even manipulative manner, Steve published another video over here talking about the response. Good watch!

Billet Labs’ Prototype was auctioned off without their consent

Anyhow, a small start-up named Billet Labs (abbreviated to BL from now on) sent in their GPU Cooler prototype to LTT for review purposes. There was an agreement in place that LTT will return it afterwards. 

BL did also specify that it was a for a specific GPU – but LTT didn’t have that GPU and decided to use a different one in their video which caused issues. On top of that, BL did provide LTT with a manual that apparently didn’t get used.

In the video, LTT proceeded to bash this prototype for not fitting correctly, apparently not working well. 

The people from BL explained, though, that LTT didn’t install it correctly, trying to bruteforce the prototype onto a GPU that it wasn’t made for, leaving gaps that seriously impede on the cooling ability of the prototype.

For anyone that isn’t tech-savvy, different pieces of equipment, from motherboards to coolers, fans, graphics cards, and other items that go into your PC tower aren’t always compatible. A cooler, for instance, needs to fight right ontop of the GPU and sometimes a motherboard is too small for some graphics cards and the like. 

I’m not tech-savvy but I did a lot of research when I built my computer. Sites like PC Part Picker helped a lot in figuring out good parts to use instead of incompatible ones, as well as some cheaper options for the suppliers and stuff.

Anyhow, LTT decided to publish this video on this specific BL cooler and completely bashed it, said that it’s crap and that nobody should buy them because this cooler doesn’t work and “only looks cool”. 

Despite that, LTT decided to auction off the prototype instead of returning it.

Billet Labs didn’t receive compensation at all and it was never agreed upon that LTT is allowed to do that. 

This prototype now being gone seriously harms BL’s production on top of the review giving them a serious blow to their reputation and evaluation. Worst of all, this prototype could theoretically get purchased by competitors that could then copy the BL cooler, leaving the small start-up in the dust.

As a Reviewer,…

This specific instance is mindblowing. As a reviewer, you have specific obligations to abide by. Now, obviously, I review digital games and not physical products but still, if I don’t know the exact terms of cooperation, I will ask about it.

One example of this would be embargoes: Sometimes publishers, PR people and developers will send out keys ahead of time to specific outlets and content creators for coverage purposes. These will then need to abide by an embargo before which no coverage can be posted.

The thing is that there are times when devs give me an embargo date but no time or timezone, so I don’t know when to post it. Hence, when I see that the timezone and time is missing, I ask about it, as I don’t want to accidentally break embargo and publish coverage ahead of time.

If a developer sent me a bunch of keys, I can’t sell them to other people. I mean, I “can” but it will get me in legal trouble, especially if it results in an embargo or NDA being broken. Sometimes you get extra keys and those are for co-workers or for people to do the multiplayer with. In some cases, devs specify that you can give them away which is cool of them to do.

The worst part about this, though, is that LTT has a huge platform and them completely bashing a product made by a small start-up can be detrimental to said start-up’s success rate.

This is even worse when you consider the screw drivers and other products from sponsored partners that LTT endorses even though they’re crap. 

Some of those sponsors are also shareholders in the LMG which probably is also why their products are endorsed so much and used for benchmarking. This is unethical.

Another time, they criticized a company’s mouse for the friction but didn’t realise that they forgot to remove the protective foil at the bottom of the mouse. When called out on that, they kept deflecting instead of admitting their mistake. This specific part of the video was later edited out but the video amassed a ton of views before that point. The damage was done.

To add to this, at the time, LTT also gave away said mice to fans as a big prize at an event even though they found them to be so horrible… It’s hypocritical.

LTT’s toxic fanbase

Now, there are people that will defend LTT over these concerns stating that the mouse thing wasn’t a review but an “Early Impression” and hence shouldn’t be taken at face value… but in reality, nobody cares about what you call a video. If you’re checking out and evaluating a product, it’s a review. An Early Impression also contains an opinion and evaluation, hence it’s a review (of the early impressions), too.

And a lot of people are trying to dismiss the allegations of unethical and biased if not even hypocritical and quantity-driven behaviour because a very vocal and big part of the LTT fanbase is incredibly toxic, to a degree akin to Musk’s and Mr. Beast‘s fanbase. 

They don’t care about your data and sources, no matter how objective and calm you try to be. No matter what your points are, there is a very toxic and vocal majority of that fanbase that will come at you if you dare attack Linus who admitted himself that he was working in a sloppy manner.

Linus himself said on the WAN podcast that he’d rather dish out bad content than spend another hundred of dollars of another person’s time to fix something… but it doesn’t explain why he pushes for people to fix four-minute videos in editing via an asterisk that nobody will read instead of just redoing that one sentence that contains the wrong information.

LTT’s toxic work environment

Linus stepped down as CEO but still is the owner of this tech firm and a lot of what is going wrong behind the scenes is in part his fault as the person that tells people to bring up issues not with HR but the person causing issues.

People getting overworked to push out 25+ videos per week is never good. Add to that data that is altered and changed to benefit sponsors and shareholders, all the while you’re pretending to be an objective and professional review outlet while also deflecting criticism by stating that you’re goofy in nature… Yeah, weird stuff.

And I didn’t even get into the other allegations that recently surfaced because it’s just too much for now. Hence, check out this post over here.

Overall, I think reviewers should be careful in how they express their views. I believe that it’s not our place to destroy people’s livelihoods by stating that their prototype or other game is horrible. Actively discouraging the purchase is not a great thing to do when you’re someone with such a big part platform, unless you have good reasons for doing so. 

If those reasons, however, are that you’re a fratboy who can’t even read a manual, then maybe “reevaluate your priorities”, to quote Linus… which is something he said to a new employee who just started out after moving to a different country right after her brother died. More on that in the other post.

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.