Jacen's Rants

On Gamers Nexus - The Steve Burke Rant

January 18, 2025

I'm kinda over Gamers Nexus and their particular brand of journalism, so I feel like I need to say something, even if no one is going to read it.

I noticed a post from Have I Been Pwned make its way across my feed. The reason this particular one caught my eye is because it featured a video from Gamers Nexus as a source.

A YouTube video titled "Scam Warning: MSI Exposes 600,000+ Warranty Records" by Gamers Nexus

If this seems like a big breach, that's because it is. This is not a defense of MSI, and they certainly deserve all the backlash they get from this situation. I'm not arguing that.

The problem is that this title doesn't actually explain the situation accurately.

From Have I Been Pwned: "MSI inadvertently left 250k unique email addresses publicly exposed"

My first issue is a bit pedantic, but I still feel like it's important to touch on. The "600,000 warranty claims" doesn't actually convey the severity of the breach accurately. The important part is the "250,000 unique entries". That's the part that should have been focused on, and it would have been just as clickable of a title as 600,000 was.

The second issue highlights my real issue with Gamers Nexus: the decision to call it a scam.

Once again, this is not a defense of MSI or an attempt to excuse their actions. This was a monumental fuck-up that should never have happened. That said, it's exactly that: a fuck-up.

This was not a scam. MSI didn't intentionally expose this information in order to screw over their customers. This was negligence, plain and simple.

This is a bit of a theme with Steve overall. He seems to have a problem with attributing to malice things that are easily explained by stupidity.

Based on what I've seen, I think Steve has a very particular sense of morality that blinds him to the fact that people do make mistakes and are capable of fixing those mistakes. He has a tendency to blow things out of proportion and charge in with all guns blazing. He seems to have a desire to destroy things rather than encouraging people to fix things and do better next time.

Tearing things down is not a sustainable way to create change, and Steve's way of doing things isn't going to make the world a better place in the long run.