Linus Sebastian, the founder and CVO of Linus Tech Tips (LTT) and Linus Media Group (LMG) has been involved in a squabble with the host and founder of GamersNexus’s Stephen Burke for the past 2 years or so – which has ultimately culminated in a mutual call-out on social media.
This controversy began sometime in 2023, when Stephen called out LTT for inadequate testing methods – as seen when an employee of LTT Labs commented that they did not re-use data procured during testing.
The video also went into detail the potential inaccuracies as well as a rushed schedule, for which Linus made a rather hasty apology video for. This was, however, shortly followed by a more informative video, after which things seemed to settle down for a bit.
LTT Labs even managed to revamp their whole testing process, but things took a turn for the worse when a video explaining the yet unknown Honey scam implied that LMG had been participants (unwilling or otherwise) in the same.
GamersNexus’s Stephen Burke was quick to respond to this, releasing a video of their own take on the Honey scam – with Stephen explicitly calling out Linus for ‘not releasing’ this information to the public, despite having knowledge of potential wrongdoings at Honey.
Linus soon followed this up with a segment on their WAN show, responding to Burke and clarifying some points about these allegations. It was alleged that GamersNexus had taken LTT out of context in this particular instance, intentionally avoiding the fact that LTT had no idea that Honey was intentionally tampering with the coupons.
Linus also called out Burke for ‘not following journalistic standards’ – that is, by not informing them of the situation beforehand, choosing to release the video before reaching out to Linus in a private mail which resulted in a few errors.
GamersNexus soon followed this with a long response on their official website, providing receipts for plagiarism, failures to resolve issues and ‘unprofessionalism’. Burke also remarked that Linus was highly unprofessional and used derogatory remarks in a prior call.
All of which has culminated into what appears to be a petty squabble between the two parties, with no signs of ending anytime soon.
While GamersNexus does make some excellent points, some of these points (especially those presented in the recent post) do appear to be somewhat petty and personal, and at times even somewhat of a nothing burger.
LMG and Linus Sebastian aren’t exactly free from all of these allegations, but it does put into question how much of this ‘controversy’ is really about putting the truth forward instead of being just a simple, pointless squabble between two creators.
