This is interesting to me because I think a lot of "why did X bomb" videos I've seen aren't negative. Obviously, negative ones exist and I'm sure there's a huge range of those videos so I'm only pulling from smaller examples, but the ones I see are usually exploring a "good" game that ultimately didn't do well or a franchise that failed to take off, then exploring said reasons why. Sometimes it's a marketing issue, or there was some behind the scenes drama with the studio, executive meddling, money troubles etc. It might also be something with the timing of when a game was released, getting overshadowed by something bigger that ultimately did it better.
But actual negative/critique videos tend to either be reviews or something more blatant like "Why game X sucked" or "how game Y killed a franchise"
I really feel like with sales figures especially, the videos are more positive, with the person liking the game and expressing disappointment it didn't do better because the low sales mean it's unlikely the producer will be able to make another game/continue with the series. But even if we assume it's a negative video like Lily says, I don't think his point makes any sense, because if the person just wants to rant about a game being bad, I don't think they'd really bring up sales figures at all, and even if the game sold billions of copies, they'd still make the video complaining about the quality.
I agree with the first tweet because it's just a general statement, but in 2025, I think the "you have to buy a game before you know it's good" statement is really dated. I will agree I miss demos being more common. But I also think they're not like...dead, several of the games I've bought recently I've played demos for, but I do think some companies do a poor job advertising there's a demo. Outside of demos, I think a lot of people will watch a few minutes of a YouTuber/Twitch streamer playing a game if they're thinking about buying it, precisely so they can see some of the gameplay and get a better idea of the quality of the game. I'd even argue the opposite of Lily's point, that if a studio *only* has graphics to show, especially if it's a new franchise/company, that tends to raise red flags versus an existing game/franchise.
