Basically, LMG were producing way too much content way too fast without proper testing of products and were making tons of mistakes, and wouldn’t take the proper measures to take accountability for or fix the mistakes they were making. An egregious example was a mouse they reviewed where they literally didn’t take the tape off the bottom of it. They also got a one of a kind prototype cooler from a very small start-up company, improperly tested it (used the wrong GPU that it wasn’t even made for), blasted the product and called it horrible because of it, then refused to properly retest it because it’d at most cost $500 (despite them being a $100 million dollar company), and to put the cherry on top, auctioned off the product despite the company explicitly requesting it back and LMG even agreeing to send it back.

Now LMG is also being accused of sexual harassment and being an overall extremely toxic and horrible work place by a former employee.

I’d strongly recommend just watching the Gamers Nexus video and reading the thread from the former employee because this reply doesn’t near do this shitshow justice and I’m sure I’m missing out on a lot details.

I will give a version of event that I have observed, simplified (a lot of things glossed over), and maybe inaccurate.

1. LinusTechTips (one of their employees) criticized Hardware Unboxed and Gamers Nexus do banchmark videos in a lab tour video (on MurfsGaming channel), HUB fight back on Twitter(X), Linus (the owner of LMG) double down in their WAN show saying some creators are unprofessional, this leads to Gamers Nexus doing a long video point out how unprofessional LTT is (many errors in their videos).

2. In Gamers Nexus’s video, they shared a story that a company send their working prototype for LTT to review, but LTT doing the testing wrong (use the prototype with incompatible hardware), then sold the prototype for charity when they have been requested to send it back twice, screwing the startup company on top of giving inaccurate test results.

3. Linus (the owner of LMG) fight back in forum post with no apology (basically spraying gasoline on fire) and made up fake event saying they have already agreed to compensate the startup company.

4. Gamers Nexus says in their next video that they communicated with the startup company and LTT only contacted them two hours after previous Gamers Nexus’s published, debunked Linus’s claim that they already made a deal to compensate the startup company.

5. An ex-employee publicly talking about the time she works at LMG, bait-and-switch working contract after she moving all the way where LMG is, sexism, sexual harassment, threats, unhealthy work environment.

Timeline:

• Gamers Nexus made a video about an assortment of inaccuracies in recent LTT videos, as well as ethical concerns regarding sponsoring companies and reviewed companies
• Linus makes a written response on his forum that’s not well received
• small drama channels and a few bigger tech channels take notice
• Gamers Nexus addresses the response in a video and doubles down on their criticism
• LTT uploads a video giving small insights into what happened and says they will stop operations this week and discuss everything thoroughly, they get both sympathy and hate for it
• more drama channels and social media is starting to take notice
• Madison Tweets serious allegations against the workplace, her direct managers and even Linus himself (includes tight schedules right up to SA allegations)
• a lot of big YouTube Drama/News channels start getting involved
• LTT makes a statement regarding Madison’s allegations saying they take it very seriously and they’ll contract a third party to conduct investigations.
• a lot of social media sites get flooded by bits and pieces of it

There are three separate things going on.

1. Gamers Nexus made a video exposing LTT for their lack of quality control in their videos regarding providing accurate information after a video where an LTT employee said that they did things better than Gamers Nexus.

2. Gamers Nexus also brought to light a situation where Billet Labs loaned LTT their prototype liquid cooling block. LTT proceeded to publish a video where they tested it on hardware that it was explicitly not designed for and then proceeded to give it a bad review. In the video, it was clear that LTT knew it was the wrong hardware but Linus specifically said to not waste time on doing it right. After that, they failed to return the prototype and instead they sold it at auction during LTX.

3. Ex-employee Madison made some pretty serious accusations of sexual harassment and a culture of not taking issues like that seriously. There have been a few “insider sources” that have confirmed her story, though I don’t think we know who they are yet. Nobody has mentioned who the harassment came from yet.

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.

Just for the sake of clarity, I would like to link the main responses that LMG did, so that you get all the info you need.

First response by Linus: https://linustechtips.com/topic/1526180-gamers-nexus-alleges-lmg-has-insufficient-ethics-and-integrity/page/16/#comment-16078641

Response video by the higher ups at LMG: https://youtu.be/0cTpTMl8kFY

Response tweet about the Madison situation: https://twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1691944990631707102

I think this is the main stuff you should know from the LMG side of things

c/technology has a post every 15 minutes or so about it. Here’s the article linked by one of them. https://www.dexerto.com/tech/ex-linus-tech-tips-employee-alleges-mistreatment-and-poor-conditions-2251613/

Content quality and reliability slipped - which they’re taking a week off to do a retrospective and address.

Not aware of sexual harassment.