According to Billet themselves, they heard nothing about compensation or payback until about 3 hours after the original GN video went live… Which Billet hadnt even replied to before Linus made his post saying they’ve already made the deal on compensation.
…Yeah that’s enough.
Blatantly, and knowingly, lying (let’s not pretend that wasn’t the intention) about his compensation to billet is too much. No excuses for that.
You know what really sucks? Owning their stuff. I got the screwdriver (it’s pretty nice). I’m drinking from one of the water bottles right now (it’s also pretty nice).
How am I supposed to go on using that shit? I can’t do it in front of anyone who knows. “Oh you like that LTT stuff? You know what they did right?”
All that goodwill flushed because of ego. All that cost, sunk. And the worst part is that this discourages me from buying merch from anyone else again, lest I get burned again someday when it comes out they too are the opposite of the image they portray for money.
I guess there truly is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
I’ve been eyeing their screwdriver for a while, but I don’t want to give Linus my money after seeing this… Wanna sell it to me? I don’t care if it has any minor damage from regular use.
Edit: After the whole Madison thing, it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth… Nevermind the screwdriver, I’ll just buy a megapro or something…
What a joke. Linus’s response was horrible and I’m glad Steve is calling him out on it.
Money and fame went to linus’ head, didn’t think it would happen considering they preach to be transparent but here it is.
If only that bald guy at LTT would have kept his mouth shut about how their testing was better than GN/Hardware Unboxed, all this drama wouldn’t have blown up on ltt’s face LMFAO
I’ve enjoyed LTT for a long time. The quality definitely went down, which I had chalked up to growing pains.
But this is different. This is an absolute loss of trust from me, especially the response Linus posted. What a shame.
GN has another subscriber, though.
If now was a time to bring in a full time CEO and relegate Linus into “creative director”, or whatever title he wants to give himself, now is that time.
GN has simply pulled back the curtain to show another corporation who put their bottom line before their viewers. And his response only shows this even further.
Truly disappointed by the whole debacle.