My personal thoughts
At first it came off a bit whiney, but I watched the entire thing and I’m glad I did. It shows a pattern of carelessness and in some cases complete douchebaggery of LMG.
What they did to Billet Labs is absolutely un-fucking excusable. LMG and Linus, in particular, needs to be mercilessly shamed for that until Billet Labs gets a clear and unequivocal apology and paid restitution for damages. Fucking shameful. What a bunch of pricks.
Video Description
This video is not monetized. This video covers our serious concerns regarding the data accuracy of Linus Media Group, including Linus Tech Tips, ShortCircuit, and TechQuickie, particularly as it relates to rushing content out the door to favor – by staff’s own admission – quantity over quality. As the company continues to expand into its LTT Labs direction, the importance of accurate data increases; however, even as ‘only’ entertainment, there are still certain responsibilities to the consumer and the manufacturers to report fairly (and to have defined corrections processes in place). We tried to approach this as objectively as possible and hope that viewers are able to listen to the evidence we present, particularly as it relates to significant and frequent data errors that now present in nearly every technical review video.
Now, selling a prototype that was sent to you to make a video on is not good obviously, but as long as they get compensated for it, it should be no big deal. Logistical fuck ups happen and this isn’t new or uncommon. The whole idea of Linus ruining their public image based on a “bad faith” representation of the product has little standing in my mind. The crux of his assessment of the product is spot on and you also touched on this. There’s like 4 people willing to spend as much on a cooling block made from billet copper as their GPU. Regardless of current Gen or last Gen. Most people are just going to save that money to buy the next generation graphics card or upgrade elsewhere in their build where the price/performance is much more reasonable.
They might have sold it to a competitor so this could be a big deal. Not to mention this was one of Billet Lab’s only prototype and could’ve set them back months in terms of R&D.