Another entry in the public service announcement arena and not so much on the mocking.
A computer company called Artesian Builds does live streams of the custom PCs they build. They have a program where they’ll give away a PC to their ambassadors (affiliates). From what I saw in one of the videos I’ll link to below, the partnerships were very much in favor of Artesian Builds, such as requiring the AB logo to be displayed on the ambassador’s streaming channel for 6 months in exchange for half off the cost of a custom PC, and they may have focused on smaller streamers that might not have enough experience to negotiate a better deal.
In last week’s giveaway, a streamer named kiapiaa was selected. The CEO of AB, Noah Katz, decided right after she was picked to check to see if she qualified for the drawing, while the event was being streamed. He reads off her combined number of followers on social media, judges it to be low, and wants to know if she has any “redeeming qualities”. He checks the analytics dashboard and sees no one clicked on the AB link during the three months she’s been an ambassador. So, she’s “purged” (disqualified). A re-roll is immediately done to pick a different winner. Noah celebrates removing her entry and picking someone else.
kiapiaa posts this on Twitter, and gets a lot more attention. You can read the summary on the Dexerto website. At least two other streamers had similar experiences with AB.
- In KristoferYee’s coverage of this, he points out that by changing the rules to have minimum requirements, it may not legally be a giveaway any longer. Some people have contacted him for help with fixing issues with the computers they got from AB.
- JayzTwoCents decides to set aside what he had planned for the day and built a computer for her with a few components donated by EVGA. He states that changing the giveaway rules is illegal and two states would be involved in any lawsuit that came from this.
- The WAN Show from Linus Tech Tips weighs in (from 1m53s to 16m57s) on why you should “never hate on your community”. Several companies and people are either ending or reevaluating their relationship with AB.
- The apology videos from Noah Katz don’t go over well because some aren’t much of an apology.
- Saturday, March 5 at 12:52 pm Pacific time, AB announces on Twitter, “At this point we are examining a potential employee-led buy-out of the company. Thank you for your support.”
- Thirteen minutes later, Twitch streamer Tyler “Trainwreck” Niknam offers to buy the company. PowerGPU offers to back him after the purchase by fulfilling any backorders AB might have.
About two hours ago when I started looking into this, the Artesian Builds website displayed a warning message and looked like it was reloading. I snagged a screenshot and here’s what it said:
Check your browser before accessing artesianbuilds.com.
This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly.
Redirecting…
DDoS protection by Cloudflare
The site’s intermittent right now. That message sounds like they’re being hit with denial of service attacks.
I’ll close with this: Artesian Builds has good people there. One at the top, not so much. Keep that in mind when you talk about the company.